Get the date with qmake

Question

Since I'm using today's date for my application version, I'd be interested in filling it automatically.

Currently I'm doing the following in my project file:

VERSION = 15.4.20

But I'd like to make it automatic:

VERSION = $$YEAR.$$MONTH.$$DAY

Any idea?

Thomas Ayoub · Answer 1 · 2015-04-20T16:56:49.027

4

You can use QMAKE_POST_LINK with something like

$$version = date +%y.%m.%d

Edit

On Mac OS you can use:

VERSION = $$system(date +%y.%m.%d)

Adapt it to fit your others supported OS ;)

edited Apr 20 '15 at 16:56

answered Apr 20 '15 at 16:38

Thomas Ayoub

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this can not be a post link step since the version number is used during build. – Martin Delille Apr 20 '15 at 16:39
but using the date command with the arg you gave is interesting! – Martin Delille Apr 20 '15 at 16:40
1

@MartinDelille if you need more information about [a trick for prebuild step in Qt](http://stackoverflow.com/questions/5083441/how-to-add-pre-build-step-in-qmake-qtcreator) – Thomas Ayoub Apr 20 '15 at 16:44
On Windows,this could be `VERSION = $$system(date /t) $$system(time /t)` – Andy.G Aug 22 '18 at 01:56
@Andy.G On Windows this kind of not work. It works for the "product version", but not for the "file version". In the "file version" the date is taken as a math operation because of the `-` between the years, months and days values. It is the result of this math operation that is put inside the "file version" field. – Benjamin T Feb 15 '19 at 11:55

score 3 · Accepted Answer · answered Mar 03 '22 at 10:02

3

Another option is to use undocumented qmake variable _DATE_, which is available on all platforms:

BUILD_YEAR = $$str_member($${_DATE_}, -4, -1)
message("Build year '$${BUILD_YEAR}' out of '$${_DATE_}'")

See Undocumented QMake

answered Mar 03 '22 at 10:02

matejk

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score 0 · Answer 3 · answered Mar 03 '21 at 17:15

In our case, we just needed year for copyright:

company = My-Company
win32 {
    year = $$system("echo %date:~10,4%")
} else {
    year = $$system("date +%Y")
}
copyright = "Copyright (C) 2017-$$year, $$company"

Also, we used commit-hash decimal as version suffix:

win32 {
    commit = $$system("FOR /F \"tokens=*\" %H IN ('git rev-parse --short HEAD') DO @SET /A DECIMAL=0x%H")
} else {
    commit = $$system("printf '%d' 0x`git rev-parse --short HEAD`")
}

Get the date with qmake

3 Answers3

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