- Qbs Manual
- Command-Line Interface
- update-timestamps
- Qbs 1.21.0

# update-timestamps

## Synopsis

     qbs update-timestamps [options] [config:configuration-name] ...

## Description

Updates the timestamps of all build artifacts, causing the next builds of the project to do nothing until source files are updated again.

This command is useful if you know that the current changes to source files are irrelevant to the build.

Note: Using this command causes a discrepancy between the actual state of source files and the information in the build graph, so be careful.

## Options

### `--build-directory|-d <directory>`

Specifies a `<directory>` where build artifacts are stored.

The default value is the current directory unless `preferences.defaultBuildDirectory` is set.

Relative paths will be interpreted relative to the current directory.

You can use the following special values as placeholders:

- `@project` is expanded to the name of the project file excluding the extension `.qbs`.
- `@path` is expanded to the name of the directory containing the project file.

### `--less-verbose|-q`

Becomes more quiet by decreasing the log level by one. This option can be given more than once. Excessive occurrences have no effect.

If the option `--log-level` appears anywhere on the command line in addition to this option, its value is taken as the base for the decrease.

### `--log-level <level>`

Uses the specified log level.

Possible values of `<level>` are:

- `error`
- `warning`
- `info` (default value)
- `debug`
- `trace`

### `--more-verbose|-v`

Becomes more verbose by increasing the log level by one. This option can be given more than once. Excessive occurrences have no effect.

If the option `--log-level` appears anywhere on the command line in addition to this option, its value is taken as the base for the increase.

### `--products|-p <name>[,<name>...]`

Takes only the products specified by `<name>` and their dependencies into account.

### `--settings-dir <directory>`

Reads all settings (such as profile information) from the specified `<directory>`. If the directory does not exist, it will be created.

The default value is system-specific. For example:

- Linux: `$HOME/.config/QtProject/qbs`
- Windows: `%APPDATA%\QtProject\qbs`
- macOS: `$HOME/Library/Preferences/qbs`

## Parameters

### `config:configuration-name`

Specifies the build configuration to use.

Qbs can build a project for one or multiple configurations at once, each having a different set of parameters. The `config` parameter has a special function: with each occurrence a new configuration instance begins and all subsequent parameters until the next `config` are assigned to this instance. Parameter assignments before the first occurrence of `config` are applied to all build configurations. Inside products and modules, the current active build configuration can be retrieved via qbs.configurationName.

In the following snippet, a profile `clang` is applied to all configurations while `cpp.optimization` is different for `debug` and `release`:

     profile:clang config:debug cpp.optimization:none config:release cpp.optimization:small

The value of `config` determines the name of the build folder and affects the default value of the qbs.buildVariant property. Qbs knows the `config` values `"debug"` and `"release"`, but in general any name can be chosen. When naming configurations created for special purposes, follow the rules for legal names generally used in programming languages:

- The first character must be a letter (a-z), an underscore (_), or a dollar sign ($).
- Subsequent characters may be letters, digits, underscores, or dollar signs.

### `property:value`

Property values set in project files or profiles can be overridden on the command line. The syntax is:

     <prefix>.<property-name>:<property-value>

For more information, see Overriding Property Values from the Command Line.

## Examples