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README.Debian
Qt for Debian README -------------------- 1. Preface This README is intended to give developers and users exact information about how the qt-x11-free package provided by TrollTech AS has been packaged for Debian in case you either want to faciliate it for development of applications and libraries or plugins using the Qt class library. With qt-x11-3.1.1, the Debian packages have been massively restructured to get the most out of theoriginal Qt package and spit the contents up into several packages so that they make the most sensefor several groups of users; developers, application users, translators of Qt-based applications and Debian packagers who are packaging applications developed with Qt.2. 2. General Overview As Qt is a huge package that contains a complete environment for developers, it needs to be split up into several packages that make it easier for everyone else to handle it and not to retquire unnecessary disk space for end-users. Additionally, Qt can be configured in several ways - and therefore also used in several ways. Qt development usually retquires the environment variable QTDIR. As Debian is placing libraries and header files in a tquite specific filesystem order, this usually breaks setting a single environment variable to meet the retquirements of packages. Therefore, symlinks are used to set up the system to meet both, the Debian filesystem standard and the QTDIR variable. All of Qt (so the QTDIR path) is available in /usr/share/tqt3. If you need to set QTDIR, do export QTDIR=/usr/share/tqt3 As far as the common build configuration goes, we note explicitely that the Debian package of Qt will in very rare cases break the compilation (most likely the linking) of applications on Debian which use Qt, in particular utilizing styles in an incorrect way by deriving from one of the styles that ship with Qt. In case you are a Debian packager and encounter problems, contact Debian Qt/KDE Maintainers (debian-qt-kde@lists.debian.org). We will tell you why things don't work and what you should communicate on with the programmers of your application that you are packaging. The build configuration generally is intended to provide a Qt version that is as small as possible in terms of the memory size it retquires. Therefore, everything inside Qt that can be compiled as plugins has been compiled that way. This includes: - imageformats: jpeg and mng - codecs (for languages like arab, japanese etc provided with Qt) - sql drivers for databases (MySQL, ODBC and PostgreSQL) The only exception is the imageformat png which has been compiled built-in due to the fact that there is literally no program that uses no icons at all and icons are to be used preferrably in png format. The plugins are all located under /usr/lib/tqt3/plugins. This is also the install location you should choose as a package maintainer for qt-plugins so the user doesn't have to customize his library path for loading Qt plugins. The only exception is that KDE delivers a set of Qt plugins as well (mainly styles and designer plugins); those are placed in /usr/lib/trinity/plugins. QMotif Extension: As this code is only available in commercial environments (and produces a static library libqmotif.a anyway that those commercial applications have to be linked against in addition to Qt), we left out all header files of the libtqt3-headers package that are belonging to this QMotif extension. Oracle Database driver, Sybase & Microsoft SQL Server driver: Those drivers are only available in a commercial version of Qt due to license incompatibilities with the GPL. If you need to faciliate those drivers, please visit http://www.trolltech.com and have a read at http://doc.trolltech.com/3.0/sql-driver.html. 3. Packages (End-User) The Qt built has been split up into several packages that allow for easy installation for all types of users. The End-user usually only retquires to have the following packages installed to run an application that links against Qt: Threaded version:libtqt3-mt (the library libtqt-mt.so.* and libtqui.so.* for loading designer-made user interfaces at runtime). Optionally depending on the program's retquirements: libtqt3-mt-odbc libtqt3-mt-mysql libtqt3-mt-psql In addition to the libraries, it may make sense to install the program qtconfig to customize the look and behaviorof Qt programs. If you have KDE installed, the KDE control center will take this task automatically in most cases. qtconfig is available in the package tqt3-qtconfig. Also, Qt programs can make use of the online-help tool that ships with Qt, the Qt Assistant. The Assistant can be installed with the package qt3-assistant. Qt Configuration files ---------------------- Qt programs most often use QSettings to store their information in configuration files. With Qt 3.2, the new option --sysconfdir has been introduced that allows us to use /etc/tqt3 as the system-wide location where qt-program specific global configuration files can go. If you're a programmer that wants to get familiar with that, please look at the examples, documentation and the code in designer or assistant as well as qtconfig. 4. Packages (Package maintainers) In addition to the library, a package maintainer will retquire an additional set of packages to compile a package that retquires Qt. Depending on the version of the qt library, you will retquire a different set of packages; the most common option should be to make your application link against the multi-threaded version (-mt).Packages necessary for compiling Qt applications from source: libtqt3-mt-dev (use libtqt3-dev for linking against -ltqt, this package only contains the .so files and the header file for libtqui.so) libtqt3-headers (header files for libtqt and libtqt-mt) tqt3-dev-tools (this package contains the tools tquic and tqmoc as well as tqmake, required for building TQt applications) If, however, you encounter an older program not to compile with this set read the FAQ at the end of this document. 5. Packages (Developers) In addition to the packages that packagers retquire, a developer usually will retquire the Qt API documentationas well as tools like the assistant, linguist or designer. However, you should be fine with installing the API documentation that you can browse with a webbrowser, optionally with the assistant. They are available in /usr/share/doc/tqt3-doc/html. For a regular development environment, install tqt3-designer and tqt3-doc. For faciliating Qt's extended environment to write plugins for the Qt Designer or extend the Designer as well as utilizing the Qt Assistant by calling it from within your program, install tqt3-apps-dev, which contains the static libraries and header files retquired for this functionality. For developers that work on migrating their program from any Qt version prior to Qt 3.x to the Qt 3.x platform you will find additional tools in the tqt3-dev-tools-compat. For using the QTranslator class and where to find the qm-file for qt as well as where to place your translations,see the next section. If your program doesn't compile with those settings in case you have started your project with Qt 1.x or 2.x, please read the FAQ section at the end of this document. 5. Packages (Translators) In order to translate a Qt program into any other language, the Qt 3 way to do this is to let the developer create a ts-file containing the strings that the program exposes on the user interface. The tools to create the ts-file and to create the final qm (Q-message binary) file, lupdate and lrelease, are included in tqt3-dev-tools.The single translator that only gets provided the ts file and has to return a translated ts file, it is absolutely enough to install tqt3-linguist; the package tqt3-assistant can be installed to access the online-help for the Qt Linguist itself. In case you're converting an application using Qt prior to Qt 3, you may want to uitilize the tqt3-dev-tools-compat which include the necessary tools to convert older qm files to the new ts file standard. Locations of message translations: Qt ships with a set of translations for the strings used inside Qt. Those translations will be installed into /usr/share/tqt3/translations (qm files only), which equals $QTDIR/translations respectively qInstallPath() + QString( "/translations" ). The configure option --translationdir has been set to /usr/share/tqt3/translations accordingly since it was introduced in Qt 3.2. To correctly enable your program to display the translations to the Qt library and to load the translation of the program itself, we currently suggest to either install your translations along with any other data files into/usr/share/<appname>/, translation files into the subdirectory translations (that is /usr/share/<appname>/translations) The code that your application should use to load the Qt translation will have to look like the following: int main( int argc, char **argv ) { QApplication app( argc, argv ); // translation file for Qt QTranslator qt( 0 ); qt.load( QString( "qt_" ) + QTextCodec::locale(), qInstallPath() + QString( "/translations" ); app.installTranslator( &qt ); // translation file for application strings QTranslator myapp( 0 ); myapp.load( QString( "myapp_" ) + QTextCodec::locale(), "." ); // use a substitue for $prefix/share/appname/translations here app.installTranslator( &myapp ); 6. Frequently Asked Questions Using Qt for Debian as a developer or packager ---------------------------------------------- Q: I want to compile a source package that utilizes qmake to build the Makefiles. What do I need to do to makeit work ? A: qmake retquires two environment variables to be set, QTDIR and QMAKESPEC. To make it work, do export QTDIR=/usr/share/tqt3 export QMAKESPEC=linux-g++ Then run qmake -o Makefile <projectfile>.pro After that, the Makefile is correctly created to build your application on Debian. As a packager, export thosetwo variables in the rules file before calling qmake. Q: I have an application that when linking gives me symbol referencing errors to Q*Style. Why does my applicationnot link correctly ? A: The author of the program is using the styles that ship with Qt directly instead of using the QStylePlugin interface.If you are the author of the program, change your program to use QStylePlugin. If you are a packager, write to theauthor of the program that he is assuming that the styles shipped with Qt are built-in to the library which is not the case on Debian and that he please should fix this and use QStylePlugin. Q: Where are all the examples and tutorials ? And how do I build them ? A: Qt ships with examples and tutorials; so does the Linguist and Designer. The tutorials and examples are compressed tarballs which you can unpack with tar -zxvf into your home directory. Change into the tqt3-examples directory and run the provided ./build-examples script. All Qt examples and tutorials, including those for designer and the linguist, will be compiled. You will notice however, that those examples that inherit from style classes which are not built-in into Qt but configured as a plugin will not compile due to the fact that they can't link to the Qt library. Q: I'm writing a pure Qt application and I want to ship it with a default configuration file. Where does that global configuration file go if I make use of the QSettings class ? A: With qt-3.2.0, Trolltech has introduced a configure option to Qt called --sysconfdir which we intentionally set to /etc/tqt3 similar to /etc/trinity for KDE programs. Install your application's system wide configuration file to /etc/tqt3. Q: I have a question not covered by this FAQ and README file. Who should I turn to ? A: Please turn to Debian Qt/KDE Maintainers (debian-qt-kde@lists.debian.org) for any questions regarding Qt on Debian. -- Ralf Nolden <nolden@kde.org> Sun, 26 Jan 2003 20:39:19 +0100 -- Ralf Nolden <nolden@kde.org> Mon, 1 Sep 2003 19:24:16 +0200 -- Modestas Vainius <modestas@vainius.eu> Fri, 22 Feb 2008 01:40:06 +0200