Packaging a Qt application

Revision as of 15:19, 17 September 2008

1 Packaging a Qt Application
2 Useful Links

Packaging a Qt Application

Looking for a debian package of your Application

If you want to port a popular Qt application probably it is already packaged for debian. You can try to get the package source in a couple of different ways:

Adding a debian src repository in your /etc/apt/source.list file

$echo “deb http://ftp.it.debian.org/debian/ unstable main contrib non-free” >> /etc/apt/source.list
$apt-get update
$apt-cache search app_name
$apt-get source app_name

Checking http://packages.debian.org, downloading the following files and running dpkg-source -x app_name.dsc to decompress the upstream source and to apply the changes available in the diff.gz file.
- upstream source file (.tar.gz)
- package changes (.diff.gz)
- meta-data information file (.dsc)

Creating a Debian package for a new Qt Application

If your application has been already packaged, you can jump this section. If your application is quite younger and you need to package it by yourself, in order to creating a new package, you need to:

Rename the upstream source directory in Package-Version (eg: myapp-0.1)
Create “src” directory in Package-Version/
Copy all the files in the src/
Rename src/appname.pro in src/src.pro

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

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)

dh_make --createorig --single -e maintainer@email.org -c gpl

Having a look inside the debian/ dir

At this point the directory my-app contains

the source directory ( src/ )
the debian directory (debian/)

Inside the debian dir we have the files need for the creation of the debian package

Changelog - Application's change log
Compat - Debian helper compatibly version
Control - Describes the packages to be made
Copyright - Copyright text
Rules - A makefile containing the rules to build all kinds of packages

Maemo Packaging Policy

Maemo packages follow the Debian Policy, but there are some items where Maemo:

Is more strict (it is an embedded distribution)
Is more relaxed
- Only a target device (Nokia Internet Tablet)
- Only a specified UI (Hildon)
- Only one user.
Differs from Debian because Maemo has different:
- Objectives
- Maintainers
- Infrastructure

Editing the rules file

The rules file generated by dh_make will be modified in order to look like this one. We are using qmake, so we haven't a configure file to run.

#!/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
        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

Editing the Control file

Basically it specifies for each package (source or binary) a name, some dependencies, a description etc... For a Maemo package these fields are very important:

Section: Only the packages in the user segment are showed by App Installer.
Maintainer: This field MUST be changed if the upstream package is modified
XB-Maemo-Icon26: It contains the PNG icon encoded in base64 visible in the Application Installer

Source: my-application
Section: user/valid_subsection
Priority: optional 
Maintainer: name surname <xxxxxxx.xxxxxx@maemo.org>
XSBC-Original-Maintainer: name surname <yyyyy.yyyyy@debian.org>
Build-Depends: debhelper (>= 5), libqt4-dev, OTHERS_BUILD DEPENDECIES 
Standards-Version: 3.7.3

Package: my-application 
Architecture: any
Depends: ${shlibs:Depends}, ${misc:Depends}
Description: A simple test application
 A very simple application with a short description.
 Which spans multiple lines actually. 
XB-Maemo-Icon-26:
 iVBORw0KGgoAAAANSUhEUgAAABoAAAAaCAYAAACpSkzOAAAABmJLR0QA/wD/AP+g
 vaeTAAAACXBIWXMAAAsTAAALEwEAmpwYAAAAB3RJTUUH1gURDQoYya0JlwAAAU9J 
 REFUSMftlL1KA0EUhb/NZl/ggnHQxsJUxt5CUucVJCCkDfgyKdIGG5/A0s5HEBtJ
 EdDAQGBgmw0YJmMzgXXYza5CtNkDW9zZw5z7c+ZCgwb/Ai3i9sVl/Bq8RIs4LRK1 
 gJDsKvJyNXmJMuYTsMoY1zpgozaABdYArQNPZQ1kfyGU7SpqVwxzAMwABWhgpIwp
 4vWBB+AUWAI3ypjnfEXtPU4bLKx9vErTeCeiRSYF+fTn1j5dp2myE9EiU+DSi3wX 
 ymeqRQAmZ3EcA5E/fgO6BULT8zhOcrwXoJdrXRa2Lgps2y2odAUcBUIXQdz78YyC
 SldAp8b7+bXrIv91qjZBietqCc2DjbAt4b2WxJkyZljVujlwp0U0cPxuLcAIuC+4 
 dKxFlsDJarvdAGP/b6hFnDImYs+uG3hbO2AB3Jbsur63tQM+fFx3bzZocEB8AdV2
 gJBZgKTwAAAAAElFTkSuQmCC

Valid subsections are:

Accessories
Comunications
Games
Multimedia
Office
Other
Programming
Support
Themes
Tools

Editing the Changelog file

It is the log of the changes for a specified application version. It's important file because it sets the binary/binaries and the source packages version and revision. If an upstream package is re-packaged or modified for maemo, the Maemo revision string should be appended to the upstream revision. So if in Debian the package name was something like "Myapp-0.4-2" in maemo this package will be called "Myapp-0.4-2maemo0". The number after the "maemo" string is a progressive number.

Application menu icon & position

The Maemo application menu detects automatically an app that provides a .desktop file in /usr/share/application/hildon Maemo menu structure is completely different from Debian:

An unmodified Debian package installs the proper .desktop in /usr/share/applications
Applications that use the debian menu are displayed in the extra menu

In order to show our application in the correct Maemo menu:

debian/myapp.install moves the .desktop file and icons in the right directory

src/*.desktop usr/share/applications/hildon
src/*.png usr/share/icons/hicolor/26x26/apps

debian/postinst should call maemo-select-menu-location utility to permit the user to choose the menu location.

#!/bin/bash
maemo-select-menu-location myapp.desktop

Checking Maemo Packages

Lintian dissects Debian packages and reports bugs and policy violations. It contains automated checks for many aspects of Debian policy as well as some checks for common errors. Unfortunately it doesn't check conformance to the additional Maemo policy.

Currently Maemo doesn't provide any tools to check its policy.

Building the binary and the source package

To build only binary package/s

$dpkg-buildpackage -rfakeroot -b

we can install these binary package with dpkg:

$dpkg -i myapp.deb

To build the source package and to sign it with your gpg key (ABCDEF12)

dpkg-buildpackage -rfakeroot -sa -S -kABCDEF12

At this point, if you have tested your package and it works fine you can upload it in extras/extras-devel.

Useful Links

Qt4Maemo at garage

Official Qt 4.4 Documentation

Retrieved from "http://wiki.maemo.org/Packaging_a_Qt_application"

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