Compile Qt5 without GUI support on Linux ARM

Question

I'm having troubles getting Qt5 working without GUI elements on my Cortex-A9 board due the OpenGL dependencies (i.e. OpenGL ES2). I am running a Ubuntu 14.04 rootfs.

Is there any way to disable the generation of GUI classes, starting from git repository? (Target version 5.3). The only modules I need are QtCore, QtXML and QtWebSockets/QtNetwork

score 4 · Answer 1 · answered Jun 17 '14 at 18:08

The following seems to get Qt5 to compile with a LinuxFB driver and no OpenGL.

./configure -qpa linuxfb -no-largefile -opensource -verbose -release \
 -no-accessibility  -confirm-license -no-sse -no-sse2 \
 -qt-zlib -qt-libpng -nomake examples -nomake demos -nomake docs -nomake tests \
 -make libs --prefix=/usr -no-pch -no-iconv -no-nis -no-xkb -no-xshape \
 -no-xvideo -no-xsync -no-xinerama -no-xcursor -no-xfixes -no-xrandr -no-kms \
 -no-directfb -no-eglfs -no-xcb -no-dbus -no-icu -no-cups -no-gif \
 -no-accessibility -no-opengl -nomake quick -make quick1  \
 -skip multimedia -skip webkit -nomake webkit -no-pkg-config \
 -no-sql-db2 -no-sql-ibase -no-sql-mysql -no-sql-oci \
 -no-sql-odbc -no-sql-psql -no-sql-sqlite -no-sql-sqlite2 \
 -no-sql-sqlite_symbian -no-sql-tds -nomake tools \
 -device linux-custom-g++ -device-option CROSS_COMPILE=$TGT_TOOL_NAME-

The keys are, -no-opengl and -nomake quick. QtQuick2 will pull in OpenGL.

Also it seems I must do the following,

touch module_qtwebkit-make_first

This stops the build system from trying to make QtWebKit; it seems buggy. This still has the GUI classes, but don't link to them. That is before the plain make. For the install target,

touch module_qtwebkit-install_subtargets

was required. Later Qt5 releases may have fixed the QtWebkit build issues.

*linux-custom-g++* is just a QPA/QMAKE configuration file to set custom compiler paths, etc. — artless noise, Jun 17 '14 at 18:11
Newer versions have better support for non-GPU systems. I think 5.10, but definitely 5.12+. This post was for qt5.2. — artless noise, Sep 17 '19 at 11:40

score 4 · Answer 2 · answered Oct 26 '18 at 15:14

4

It seems that at least Qt 5.6.2 supports -no-gui and -no-widgets configuration options.

answered Oct 26 '18 at 15:14

juzzlin

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thanks for the addition. The question is really old and perhaps they've now added more options than in 2014, but I haven't tested them and I don't have the hardware platform for testing anymore – madduci Oct 31 '18 at 09:25
Yeah, I just didn't find any proper documentation about this when googling the same thing myself :) – juzzlin Oct 31 '18 at 15:26

score 1 · Accepted Answer · answered Jul 04 '14 at 10:17

Ubuntu team itself declared that Qt5.3. is still under investigation for armhf platforms and that probably it will be available from 14.10 release. Somehow, crawling on Qt forums, there are missing dependencies and compiling errors when there's no OpenGL/GUI module.

I resolved it installing 1t 5.2.1 from repositories and then the missing QWebSocket module from git repository.

In order to make this module compatible with older Qt version, the file .qmake.conf:

MODULE_VERSION = 5.3.2 --> to desired one (i.e. 5.2.1)

Compile Qt5 without GUI support on Linux ARM

3 Answers3