Packaging a Qt application

Contents

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


Useful Links

Qt4Maemo at garage

Official Qt 4.4 Documentation