qt_import_plugins

Specifies a custom set of plugins to import or exclude.

The command is defined in the Core component of the Qt6 package, which can be loaded like so:

 find_package(Qt6 REQUIRED COMPONENTS Core)

This command was introduced in Qt 5.14.

Synopsis

 qt_import_plugins(target
                   [INCLUDE plugin ...]
                   [EXCLUDE plugin ...]
                   [INCLUDE_BY_TYPE plugin_type plugin ...]
                   [EXCLUDE_BY_TYPE plugin_type]
                   [NO_DEFAULT]
 )

If versionless commands are disabled, use qt6_import_plugins() instead. It supports the same set of arguments as this command.

Description

Specifies a custom set of plugins to import. The optional arguments: INCLUDE, EXCLUDE, INCLUDE_BY_TYPE, and EXCLUDE_BY_TYPE, can be used more than once.

INCLUDE – can be used to specify a list of plugins to import.
EXCLUDE – can be used to specify a list of plugins to exclude.
INCLUDE_BY_TYPE – can be used to override the list of plugins to import for a certain plugin type.
EXCLUDE_BY_TYPE – can be used to specify a plugin type to exclude; then no plugins of that type are imported.
NO_DEFAULT – prevent the default plugins from being included automatically (for example, the default platform plugin).

Qt provides plugin types such as imageformats, platforms, and sqldrivers.

Dynamic plugins

If plugins are dynamic libraries, the function controls the plugin deployment. Using this function, you may exclude specific plugin types from being packaged into an Android APK, for example:

 qt_add_executable(MyApp ...)
 ...
 qt_import_plugins(MyApp EXCLUDE_BY_TYPE imageformats)

In the snippet above, all plugins that have the imageformats type will be excluded when deploying MyApp. The resulting Android APK will not contain any of the imageformats plugins.

If the command isn't used, the target automatically deploys all plugins that belong to the Qt modules that the target is linked against.

Static plugins

If the command isn't used the target automatically links against a sane set of default static plugins, for each Qt module that the target is linked against. For more information, see target_link_libraries.

Each plugin comes with a C++ stub file that automatically initializes the static plugin. Consequently, any target that links against a plugin has this C++ file added to its SOURCES.

Examples

 qt_add_executable(myapp main.cpp)
 target_link_libraries(myapp Qt6::Gui Qt6::Sql)
 qt_import_plugins(myapp
     INCLUDE Qt6::QCocoaIntegrationPlugin
     EXCLUDE Qt6::QMinimalIntegrationPlugin
     INCLUDE_BY_TYPE imageformats Qt6::QGifPlugin Qt6::QJpegPlugin
     EXCLUDE_BY_TYPE sqldrivers
 )

In the snippet above, the following occurs with the executable myapp:

The Qt6::QCocoaIntegrationPlugin is imported into myapp.
The Qt6::QMinimalIntegrationPlugin plugin is excluded from being automatically imported into myapp.
The default list of plugins for imageformats is overridden to only include Qt6::QGifPlugin and Qt6::QJpegPlugin.
All sqldrivers plugins are excluded from automatic importing.

See also qt_import_qml_plugins().