SingleApplication

This is a replacement of the QtSingleApplication for Qt5 and Qt6.

Keeps the Primary Instance of your Application and kills each subsequent instances. It can (if enabled) spawn secondary (non-related to the primary) instances and can send data to the primary instance from secondary instances.

Documentation

You can find the full usage reference here.

Usage

The SingleApplication class inherits from whatever Q[Core|Gui]Application class you specify via the QAPPLICATION_CLASS macro (QCoreApplication is the default). Further usage is similar to the use of the Q[Core|Gui]Application classes.

You can use the library as if you use any other QCoreApplication derived class:

#include <QApplication>
#include <SingleApplication.h>

int main( int argc, char* argv[] )
{
    SingleApplication app( argc, argv );

    return app.exec();
}

To include the library files I would recommend that you add it as a git submodule to your project. Here is how:

git submodule add https://github.com/itay-grudev/SingleApplication.git singleapplication

Qmake:

Then include the singleapplication.pri file in your .pro project file.

include(singleapplication/singleapplication.pri)
DEFINES += QAPPLICATION_CLASS=QApplication

CMake:

Then include the subdirectory in your CMakeLists.txt project file.

set(QAPPLICATION_CLASS QApplication CACHE STRING "Inheritance class for SingleApplication")
add_subdirectory(src/third-party/singleapplication)
target_link_libraries(${PROJECT_NAME} SingleApplication::SingleApplication)

The library sets up a QLocalServer and a QSharedMemory block. The first instance of your Application is your Primary Instance. It would check if the shared memory block exists and if not it will start a QLocalServer and listen for connections. Each subsequent instance of your application would check if the shared memory block exists and if it does, it will connect to the QLocalServer to notify the primary instance that a new instance had been started, after which it would terminate with status code 0. In the Primary Instance SingleApplication would emit the instanceStarted() signal upon detecting that a new instance had been started.

The library uses stdlib to terminate the program with the exit() function.

Also don't forget to specify which QCoreApplication class your app is using if it is not QCoreApplication as in examples above.

Instance started signal

The SingleApplication class implements a instanceStarted() signal. You can bind to that signal to raise your application's window when a new instance had been started, for example.

// window is a QWindow instance
QObject::connect(
    &app,
    &SingleApplication::instanceStarted,
    &window,
    &QWindow::raise
);

Using SingleApplication::instance() is a neat way to get the SingleApplication instance for binding to it's signals anywhere in your program.

Note: On Windows the ability to bring the application windows to the foreground is restricted. See Windows specific implementations for a workaround and an example implementation.

Secondary Instances

If you want to be able to launch additional Secondary Instances (not related to your Primary Instance) you have to enable that with the third parameter of the SingleApplication constructor. The default is false meaning no Secondary Instances. Here is an example of how you would start a Secondary Instance send a message with the command line arguments to the primary instance and then shut down.

int main(int argc, char *argv[])
{
    SingleApplication app( argc, argv, true );

    if( app.isSecondary() ) {
        app.sendMessage(  app.arguments().join(' ')).toUtf8() );
        app.exit( 0 );
    }

    return app.exec();
}

Note: A secondary instance won't cause the emission of the instanceStarted() signal by default. See SingleApplication::Mode for more details.*

You can check whether your instance is a primary or secondary with the following methods:

app.isPrimary();
// or
app.isSecondary();

Note: If your Primary Instance is terminated a newly launched instance will replace the Primary one even if the Secondary flag has been set.*

Examples

There are three examples provided in this repository:

• Basic example that prevents a secondary instance from starting examples/basic
• An example of a graphical application raising it's parent window examples/calculator
• A console application sending the primary instance it's command line parameters examples/sending_arguments

Versioning

Each major version introduces either very significant changes or is not backwards compatible with the previous version. Minor versions only add additional features, bug fixes or performance improvements and are backwards compatible with the previous release. See CHANGELOG.md for more details.

Implementation

The library is implemented with a QSharedMemory block which is thread safe and guarantees a race condition will not occur. It also uses a QLocalSocket to notify the main process that a new instance had been spawned and thus invoke the instanceStarted() signal and for messaging the primary instance.

Additionally the library can recover from being forcefully killed on *nix systems and will reset the memory block given that there are no other instances running.

License

This library and it's supporting documentation, with the exception of the Qt calculator examples which is distributed under the BSD license, are released under the terms of The MIT License (MIT) with an extra condition, that:

Permission is not granted to use this software or any of the associated files
as sample data for the purposes of building machine learning models.