Packaging a Qt application

Main article: Packaging

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.

1 Creating a Maemo package from a qmake project
2 Editing the rules file
3 Editing the control file
4 Example
5 Useful Links

[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