qt_add_ui

Adds .ui files to a target.

The command is defined in the Widgets component of the Qt6 package. Load the package with:

find_package(Qt6 REQUIRED COMPONENTS Widgets)

Synopsis

qt_add_ui(<TARGET>
          SOURCES file1.ui [file2.ui ...]
          [INCLUDE_PREFIX <PREFIX>]
          [OPTIONS ...])

If versionless commands are disabled, use qt6_add_ui() instead. It supports the same set of arguments as this command.

This command was introduced in Qt 6.8.

Description

Creates rules for calling the User Interface Compiler (uic) on the .ui files. For each input file, a header file is generated in the build directory. The generated header files are added to sources of the target.

Arguments

TARGET

The TARGET argument specifies the CMake target to which the generated header files will be added.

SOURCES

The SOURCES argument specifies the list of .ui files to process.

INCLUDE_PREFIX

INCLUDE_PREFIX specifies the include prefix for the generated header files. Use the same include prefix as in the #include directive in the source files. If ui_<basename>.h is included without a prefix, then this argument can be omitted.

OPTIONS

You can set additional OPTIONS that should be added to the uic calls. You can find possible options in the uic documentation.

Examples

Without INCLUDE_PREFIX

In the following snippet, the mainwindow.cpp file includes ui_mainwindow.h and mainwindow.h.

#include "mainwindow.h"
#include "ui_mainwindow.h"

CMakeLists.txt is implemented as follows and it calls qt_add_ui to add ui_mainwindow.h to the myapp target.

qt_add_executable(myapp mainwindow.cpp main.cpp)
qt_add_ui(myapp SOURCES mainwindow.ui)

In the above example, ui_mainwindow.h is included without a prefix. So the INCLUDE_PREFIX argument is not specified.

With INCLUDE_PREFIX

#include "mainwindow.h"
#include "src/files/ui_mainwindow.h"

In the above snippet, mainwindow.cpp includes ui_mainwindow.h with a prefix.

qt_add_executable(myapp mainwindow.cpp main.cpp)
qt_add_ui(myapp INCLUDE_PREFIX "src/files" SOURCES mainwindow.ui)

Since ui_mainwindow.h is included with a prefix, the INCLUDE_PREFIX argument is specified as src/files in the above example.

Multiple .ui files

In the following snippets, both widget1.cpp and widget2.cpp include ui_widget1.h and ui_widget2.h respectively.

widget1.cpp:

#include "src/files/ui_widget1.h"

widget2.cpp:

#include "src/files/ui_widget2.h"

Both ui_widget1.h and ui_widget2.h are included with the same prefix

qt_add_executable(myapp widget1.cpp widget2.cpp main.cpp)
qt_add_ui(myapp INCLUDE_PREFIX "src/files" SOURCES widget1.ui widget2.ui)

In this case, the INCLUDE_PREFIX argument can be specified as src/files for both files in the above snippet.

When to prefer qt_add_ui over AUTOUIC?

qt_add_ui has some advantages over AUTOUIC:

• qt_add_ui ensures that the .ui files are generated correctly during the first build, for the Ninja and Ninja Multi-Config generators.
• qt_add_ui guarantees that the generated .h files are not leaked outside the build directory.
• Since qt_add_ui does not scan source files, it provides a faster build than AUTOUIC.

When to prefer qt_add_ui over qt_wrap_ui?

qt_add_ui has the INCLUDE_PREFIX argument, which can be used to specify the include prefix for the generated header files.