Parallel builds with qmake
So you’d like to run make -j4 on your qmake project (or make -j3, make -j2, hi google). Yes, it is possible, but like many things qmake, it is not documented. As usual, the best way to learn about qmake is to see how Qt itself uses it. Actually, I recommend Qt’s own build files as a primary source for qmake information anyway, as if you know where something ought to be in a project then it is faster to find it than going through the formal manual.
In a SUBDIRS project, you may have something like this:
SUBDIRS += library unittest examples
Change it to this:
# depend on variables, not actual directories
SUBDIRS += sub_library sub_unittest sub_examples
# specify the directories and dependencies
sub_library.subdir = library
sub_unittest.subdir = unittest
sub_unittest.depends = sub_library
sub_examples.subdir = examples
sub_examples.depends = sub_library
Have fun.


[...] Parallel building makes a massive improvement though, with modern multicore CPUs. If you're running with Qt Creator, you can force your whole project to build in parallel by going to Projects -> Build Settings -> expanding the 'Make:' build step and setting Make arguments to -j3 MAKE="mingw32-make -j3" (where 3 is your number of parallel steps.) YMMV on that, though. You may need to better specify dependencies, as described here. [...]