Project Configuration

A Livekeys package is a collection of Livekeys plugins, usually in the form of a source code repository. A collection of plugins is grouped together if it serves a similar purpose, or if it serves as a set of wrappers for the same library. (e.g. lcv* based plugins in Livekeys are all dependent on Open CV library)

In this part we will mostly describe the recommended way to organize such a repository. The tutorial repository can be used as an example.

Previously we have created a plugin with 3 components, under the tutorial uri. The uri is used when importing the plugin into our application, and also it is taken as the path to our plugin. Livekeys applies this uri from the plugins folder. So a plugin with the uri opencv.contrib.core is expected to be located in /plugins/opencv/contrib/core. This is important, since we want to group our plugins depending on their context. It's much easier to manage a package if all it's plugins are imported under the same prefix. Currently Livekeys provides all its plugins without a prefix (e.g. lcvcore instead of opencv.core) for ease of access, however, it's recommended that packages created for Livekeys should be grouped under the same prefix.

Structuring packages this way, we can group all of our plugins into our plugins folder, for example:

plugins/opencv/contrib/core
plugins/opencv/contrib/imgproc
plugins/tutorial

Our main repository can then use the plugins folders as subdirs:

// livetutorial.pro

TEMPLATE = subdirs
SUBDIRS += plugins

And in our plugins, we can further add our plugin:

// plugins/plugins.pro

TEMPLATE = subdirs
SUBDIRS += tutorial

Since each plugin needs to configure LIVEKEYS_DEV_PATH and LIVEKEYS_BIN_PATH in our project is a bit of an overhead.

To avoid this, qmake provides a file that is automatically included in all our projects called .qmake.conf. If we add this file to the top of our repository, we can provide functionality to all of our plugins in one go:

// .qmake.conf

LIVEKEYS_BIN_PATH = <path_to_livekeys_installation>
LIVEKEYS_DEV_PATH = $$LIVEKEYS_BIN_PATH/dev

PROJECT_ROOT = $$PWD

include($$LIVEKEYS_DEV_PATH/project/package.pri)

The project root is defined as the top level of our repository, and by including the package.pri file, we also add

the functions.pri file we used in the previous parts and also configure our package to be build directly into the livekeys/plugins directory so we can use it as soon as its built.

The last change we can make is to remove some boiler plate code in our actual plugin file, by including the provided plugin.pri file in LIVEKEYS_DEV_PATH/project:

PLUGIN_NAME = tutorial
PLUGIN_PATH = $$PWD

PLUGIN_NAME and PLUGIN_PATH must be set up prior to including this config file
include($$LIVEKEYS_DEV_PATH/project/plugin.pri)
uri = tutorial
DEFINES += Q_LCV
Dependencies
linkPlugin(live,    live)
linkPlugin(lcvcore, lcvcore)
Sources
SOURCES += 
    tutorial_plugin.cpp 
    countnonzeropixels.cpp 
    addweighted.cpp 
    compilationcount.cpp
HEADERS += 
    tutorial_plugin.h 
    countnonzeropixels.h 
    addweighted.h 
    compilationcount.h
DISTFILES = qmldir

Using this configuraiton, we are able to set up our package for deployment, and use automated deployment scripts to create releases.