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Packaging a Qt application

Latest revision as of 09:11, 4 November 2010

Packaging a Qt application for Maemo is very similar to packaging any other application, so this document only contains information on Qt-specific packaging issues.

[edit] Creating a Maemo package from a qmake project

In order to create a new package for Maemo, from a qmake project, you will need to:

• Rename the source directory to Package-Version (for example myapp-0.1 for an application ‘myapp’ with a version of ‘0.1’)
• Create a ‘src’ directory in Package-Version/
• Copy all the files to the src/ directory
• Rename src/appname.pro to src/src.pro

Please make sure that the directory name is <package-version> format and in small case letters.

$mv myapp myapp-0.1
$cd myapp-0.1
$mkdir src
$cp * src
$mv src/appname.pro src/src.pro

Append the following chunk to end of your src/src.pro. The chunk adds an install section to your qmakefile

unix {
  #VARIABLES
  isEmpty(PREFIX) {
    PREFIX = /usr
  }
  BINDIR = $$PREFIX/bin
  DATADIR =$$PREFIX/share

  DEFINES += DATADIR=\\\"$$DATADIR\\\" PKGDATADIR=\\\"$$PKGDATADIR\\\"

  #MAKE INSTALL

  INSTALLS += target desktop service iconxpm icon26 icon48 icon64

  target.path =$$BINDIR

  desktop.path = $$DATADIR/applications/hildon
  desktop.files += $${TARGET}.desktop

  service.path = $$DATADIR/dbus-1/services
  service.files += $${TARGET}.service

  icon64.path = $$DATADIR/icons/hicolor/64x64/apps
  icon64.files += ../data/64x64/$${TARGET}.png
}

• Create a myapp-0.1/myapp.pro file like this:

QMAKEVERSION = $$[QMAKE_VERSION]
ISQT4 = $$find(QMAKEVERSION, ^[2-9])
isEmpty( ISQT4 ) {
error("Use the qmake include with Qt4.4 or greater, on Debian that is qmake-qt4");
}

TEMPLATE = subdirs
SUBDIRS  = src

• Run dh_make to debianize the source archive, it creates:
  • An archive with the unchanged upstream source (orig.tar.gz)
  • Some basic files in the debian directory
  • Some example files (*.EX *.ex)

export DEBFULLNAME="maintainer first name and last name"
dh_make --createorig --single -e maintainer@email.org -c gpl

[edit] Editing the rules file

The rules file generated by dh_make, found in debian/rules will be modified in order to look like this one. We are using qmake, so there is no configure script to run. If you copy and paste the following file, notice the empty space at the beginning of the lines these are TAB characters, they are not multiple space characters. If you copy and paste the following chunk, you most propably get space's instead of tabs if this is true then the file will not work.

#!/usr/bin/make -f
APPNAME := my_app_name
builddir:
        mkdir -p builddir

builddir/Makefile: builddir
        cd builddir && qmake-qt4 PREFIX=/usr ../$(APPNAME).pro

build: build-stamp

build-stamp: builddir/Makefile
        dh_testdir
        # Add here commands to compile the package.
        cd builddir && $(MAKE)
        touch $@

clean:
        dh_testdir
        dh_testroot
        rm -f build-stamp
        # Add here commands to clean up after the build process.
        rm -rf builddir
        dh_clean
install: build
        dh_testdir
        dh_testroot
        dh_clean -k
        dh_installdirs

        # Add here commands to install the package into debian/your_appname
        cd builddir && $(MAKE) INSTALL_ROOT=$(CURDIR)/debian/$(APPNAME) install
# Build architecture-independent files here.
binary-indep: build install
# We have nothing to do by default.

# Build architecture-dependent files here.
binary-arch: build install
        dh_testdir
        dh_testroot
        dh_installdocs
        dh_installexamples
        dh_installman
        dh_link
        dh_strip --dbg-package=my-application-dbg
        dh_compress
        dh_fixperms
        dh_installdeb
        dh_shlibdeps
        dh_gencontrol
        dh_md5sums
        dh_builddeb

binary: binary-indep binary-arch
.PHONY: build clean binary-indep binary-arch binary install configure

[edit] Editing the control file

The control file generated by dh_make, found in debian/control will be modified substantially. Please refer to the general packaging guide for Maemo for details.

For Qt applications you need to make sure to add libqt4-dev as an additional entry in the field Build-Depends.

[edit] Example

You can download the source package of qt-maemo-example from the extras-devel repository as follows, if you have source packages enabled in your /etc/apt/sources.list file:

apt-get source qt-maemo-example

This command will download the:

• unmodified source (.orig.tar.gz)
• debian dsc file (.dsc)
• diff file (.diff)

and will then automatically launch dpkg -x file.dsc in order to decompress the orig.tar.gz and apply the changes.

[edit] Useful Links

• Packaging Qt Creator Apps for Maemo Extras
• Qt for Maemo
• Packaging guide for Maemo
• Deploying your Maemo 5 Qt application Qt documentation