Qt5 is a cross-platform application framework that is widely used for developing application software with a graphical user interface (GUI) (in which cases qt5 is classified as a widget toolkit), and also used for developing non-GUI programs such as command-line tools and consoles for servers. Two of the major users of qt are KDE Frameworks 5 (KF5) and LXQt.
The full qt5 package consists of 43 separate components. These instructions use a small subset of the full qt5 installation instructions above. They cover most, but not all, of the components needed to build packages in BLFS. This page, and the next, are provided to reduce the amount of time, space, and dependencies needed to build these packages. They are not recommended if you will build the KDE Frameworks-5.109.0 based Plasma-5.27.7 desktop environment.
This package is known to build and work properly using an LFS 12.0 platform.
Download (HTTP): https://download.qt.io/archive/qt/5.15/5.15.10/single/qt-everywhere-opensource-src-5.15.10.tar.xz
Download MD5 sum: fb41d86bea6bc4886030a5092c910b09
Download size: 629 MB
Estimated disk space required: 8.7 GB (153 MB installed)
Estimated build time: 5.7 SBU (using parallelism=8)
Now that qt5 updates are restricted to commercial customers, upstream patches for the various modules are being curated at kde. Patches for the modules required by packages in BLFS have been aggregated for the non-modular qt5 build we use.
Required patch: https://www.linuxfromscratch.org/patches/blfs/12.0/qt-everywhere-opensource-src-5.15.10-kf5-1.patch
Details of the kde curation can be found at https://dot.kde.org/2021/04/06/announcing-kdes-qt-5-patch-collection and https://community.kde.org/Qt5PatchCollection.
alsa-lib-1.2.9, Cups-2.4.6, double-conversion-3.3.0, GLib-2.76.4, HarfBuzz-8.1.1, ICU-73.2, hicolor-icon-theme-0.17, Mesa-23.1.6, libjpeg-turbo-3.0.0, libxkbcommon-1.5.0, SQLite-3.42.0, Wayland-1.22.0 (Mesa must be built with Wayland EGL backend), xcb-util-image-0.4.1, xcb-util-keysyms-0.4.1, xcb-util-renderutil-0.3.10, and xcb-util-wm-0.4.2
GTK+-3.24.38, libinput-1.23.0 MariaDB-10.11.4 or MySQL, MIT Kerberos V5-1.21.2, mtdev-1.1.6 PostgreSQL-15.4, and unixODBC-2.3.12
Editor Notes: https://wiki.linuxfromscratch.org/blfs/wiki/qt5
The BLFS editors recommend installing qt5 in a directory other than /usr
, i.e. /opt/qt5
. To do this, set the following
environment variable:
export QT5PREFIX=/opt/qt5
Sometimes, the installation paths are hardcoded into installed
files. This is the reason why /opt/qt5
is used as installation prefix instead
of /opt/qt-5.15.10
. To create a
versioned qt5 directory after
the installation is complete, you may rename the directory and
create a symlink:
mkdir -pv /opt/qt-5.15.10 ln -sfnv qt-5.15.10 /opt/qt5
Later on, you may want to install other versions of qt5. To do that, just remove the symlink and
use /opt/qt5
as the prefix again.
Which version of qt5 you use
depends only on where the symlink points.
If qt5 is being reinstalled into
the same directory as an existing instance, run the commands done
by root
, such as make install, from a console or
non-qt5 based window manager. It overwrites qt5 libraries that should not be in use
during the install process.
If you did not install some of the recommended dependencies, examine ./configure --help output to check how to disable them or use internal versions bundled in the source tarball.
The BLFS editors do not recommend installing qt5 into the /usr hierarchy because it becomes difficult to find components and to update to a new version. If you do want to install qt5 in /usr, the directories need to be specified explicitly. In this case, set QT5PREFIX=/usr and add the following to the configure arguments below:
-archdatadir /usr/lib/qt5 \ -bindir /usr/bin \ -plugindir /usr/lib/qt5/plugins \ -importdir /usr/lib/qt5/imports \ -headerdir /usr/include/qt5 \ -datadir /usr/share/qt5 \ -docdir /usr/share/doc/qt5 \ -translationdir /usr/share/qt5/translations \ -examplesdir /usr/share/doc/qt5/examples
First, apply a patch to pull in the fixes curated by kde for those modules which are required by packages mentioned in this book:
patch -Np1 -i ../qt-everywhere-opensource-src-5.15.10-kf5-1.patch
The patch is supposed to be used in a git repository, because the
behavior of the configure command below is
changed in this case. It is enough to create a .git
directory in the qmake
directory, where the configure script is run:
mkdir -pv qtbase/.git
At this point we want to set up skipping most components. Do that with:
ls -Fd qt* | grep / | sed 's/^/-skip /;s@/@@' > tempconf && sed -i -r '/base|tools|x11extras|svg|declarative|wayland/d' tempconf
Now, install qt5 by running the following commands:
./configure -prefix $QT5PREFIX \ -sysconfdir /etc/xdg \ -confirm-license \ -opensource \ -dbus-linked \ -openssl-linked \ -system-harfbuzz \ -system-sqlite \ -nomake examples \ -no-rpath \ -journald \ $(cat tempconf) \ && make
This package does not come with a test suite.
Now, as the root
user:
make install
Remove references to the build directory from installed library
dependency (prl) files by running the following command as the
root
user:
find $QT5PREFIX/ -name \*.prl \ -exec sed -i -e '/^QMAKE_PRL_BUILD_DIR/d' {} \;
Install images and create the menu entries for installed
applications. The QT5BINDIR
variable is
used here to point to the directory for the executable programs. If
you have changed the bindir above, QT5BINDIR
will need to be adjusted below. Be sure
that the QT5BINDIR
variable is defined
in root's environment and as the root
user:
QT5BINDIR=$QT5PREFIX/bin install -v -dm755 /usr/share/pixmaps/ && install -v -Dm644 qttools/src/assistant/assistant/images/assistant-128.png \ /usr/share/pixmaps/assistant-qt5.png && install -v -Dm644 qttools/src/designer/src/designer/images/designer.png \ /usr/share/pixmaps/designer-qt5.png && install -v -Dm644 qttools/src/linguist/linguist/images/icons/linguist-128-32.png \ /usr/share/pixmaps/linguist-qt5.png && install -v -Dm644 qttools/src/qdbus/qdbusviewer/images/qdbusviewer-128.png \ /usr/share/pixmaps/qdbusviewer-qt5.png && install -dm755 /usr/share/applications && cat > /usr/share/applications/assistant-qt5.desktop << EOF[Desktop Entry] Name=Qt5 Assistant Comment=Shows Qt5 documentation and examples Exec=$QT5BINDIR/assistant Icon=assistant-qt5.png Terminal=false Encoding=UTF-8 Type=Application Categories=Qt;Development;Documentation;
EOF cat > /usr/share/applications/designer-qt5.desktop << EOF[Desktop Entry] Name=Qt5 Designer GenericName=Interface Designer Comment=Design GUIs for Qt5 applications Exec=$QT5BINDIR/designer Icon=designer-qt5.png MimeType=application/x-designer; Terminal=false Encoding=UTF-8 Type=Application Categories=Qt;Development;
EOF cat > /usr/share/applications/linguist-qt5.desktop << EOF[Desktop Entry] Name=Qt5 Linguist Comment=Add translations to Qt5 applications Exec=$QT5BINDIR/linguist Icon=linguist-qt5.png MimeType=text/vnd.trolltech.linguist;application/x-linguist; Terminal=false Encoding=UTF-8 Type=Application Categories=Qt;Development;
EOF cat > /usr/share/applications/qdbusviewer-qt5.desktop << EOF[Desktop Entry] Name=Qt5 QDbusViewer GenericName=D-Bus Debugger Comment=Debug D-Bus applications Exec=$QT5BINDIR/qdbusviewer Icon=qdbusviewer-qt5.png Terminal=false Encoding=UTF-8 Type=Application Categories=Qt;Development;Debugger;
EOF
Some packages such as VLC-3.0.18 look for certain executables with
a -qt5 suffix. Run the following command as the root
user to create the necessary symlinks:
for file in moc uic rcc qmake lconvert lrelease lupdate; do ln -sfrvn $QT5BINDIR/$file /usr/bin/$file-qt5 done
-confirm-license
: Accept
license without prompting user during configuration.
-opensource
: Install the
opensource version of qt.
-nomake examples
: This
switch disables building of the example programs included in the
source tarball. Remove it if you want to build them.
-system-sqlite
: This switch
enables use of the system version of SQLite.
-system-harfbuzz
: This
switch enables use of the system version of Harfbuzz.
-dbus-linked
-openssl-linked
: These switches enable explicit linking
of the D-Bus and OpenSSL libraries into qt5 libraries instead of dlopen()-ing them.
-journald
: This switch
allows to send qt messages to the journald logging system.
$(cat tempconf): This command provides a list of components that should not be built. These entries are in the form of "-skip <component>".
If Sudo-1.9.14p3 is installed, QT5DIR should be
available to the super user as well. Execute the following
commands as the root
user:
cat > /etc/sudoers.d/qt << "EOF"
Defaults env_keep += QT5DIR
EOF
If you installed qt5 in
/usr
, create an environment
variable needed by certain packages. As the root
user:
cat > /etc/profile.d/qt5.sh << "EOF"
# Begin /etc/profile.d/qt5.sh
QT5DIR=/usr
export QT5DIR
# End /etc/profile.d/qt5.sh
EOF
If you installed qt5 in a
location other than /usr
, you need
to update the following configuration files so that qt5 is correctly found by other packages and
system processes.
As the root
user, update the
/etc/ld.so.conf
file and the
dynamic linker's run-time cache file:
cat >> /etc/ld.so.conf << EOF
# Begin Qt addition
/opt/qt5/lib
# End Qt addition
EOF
ldconfig
As the root
user, create the
/etc/profile.d/qt5.sh
file:
cat > /etc/profile.d/qt5.sh << "EOF"
# Begin /etc/profile.d/qt5.sh
QT5DIR=/opt/qt5
pathappend $QT5DIR/bin PATH
pathappend $QT5DIR/lib/pkgconfig PKG_CONFIG_PATH
export QT5DIR
# End /etc/profile.d/qt5.sh
EOF