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Installing Qt/X11

You may need to be root, depending on the permissions of the directories where you choose to install Qt.

1. Unpack the archive if you have not done so already:

       cd /usr/local
       gunzip qt-x11-version.tar.gz    # uncompress the archive
       tar xf qt-x11-version.tar       # unpack it
   

   This creates the directory /usr/local/qt-version containing the files from the main archive.

   Rename qt-version to qt (or make a symlink):

       mv qt-version qt
   

   The rest of this file assumes that Qt is installed in /usr/local/qt.

2. Set some environment variables in the file .profile (or .login, depending on your shell) in your home directory. Create the file if it is not there already.
   • QTDIR -- wherever you installed Qt
   • PATH -- to locate the moc program and other Qt tools
   • MANPATH -- to access the Qt man pages
   • LD_LIBRARY_PATH -- for the shared Qt library

   This is done like this:

   In .profile (if your shell is bash, ksh, zsh or sh), add the following lines:

       QTDIR=/usr/local/qt
       PATH=$QTDIR/bin:$PATH
       MANPATH=$QTDIR/man:$MANPATH
       LD_LIBRARY_PATH=$QTDIR/lib:$LD_LIBRARY_PATH
   
       export QTDIR PATH MANPATH LD_LIBRARY_PATH
   

   In .login (in case your shell is csh or tcsh), add the following lines:

       setenv QTDIR /usr/local/qt
       setenv PATH $QTDIR/bin:$PATH
       setenv MANPATH $QTDIR/man:$MANPATH
       setenv LD_LIBRARY_PATH $QTDIR/lib:$LD_LIBRARY_PATH
   

   After you have done this, you will need to login again, or re-source the profile before continuing, so that at least $QTDIR is set. The installation will give an error message and not proceed otherwise.

3. Install your license file. For the free edition, you do not need a license file. For Professional and Enterprise editions, install your license file as described in your distribution.

4. Compile the Qt library, and build the example programs, the tutorial and the tools (e.g. Qt Designer) as follows.

   Type:

       ./configure
   

   This will configure the Qt library for your machine. Note that GIF support is turned off by default. Run ./configure -help to get a list of configuration options. Read PLATFORMS for a list of supported platforms.

   To create the library and compile all examples and the tutorial:

       make
   

   If you have problems, see http://www.trolltech.com/platforms/.

5. In very few cases you may need to run /sbin/ldconfig or something similar at this point if you are using shared libraries.

   If you have problems running the example programs, e.g. messages like

       can't load library 'libqt.so.2'
   

   you probably need to put a reference to the qt library in a configuration file and run /sbin/ldconfig as root on your system. And don't forget to set LD_LIBRARY_PATH as explained in 2) above.

6. The online HTML documentation is installed in /usr/local/qt/doc/html/ The main page is /usr/local/qt/doc/html/index.html. The man pages are installed in /usr/local/qt/doc/man/. The documentation is also accessible using Qt Assistant.

You're done. Qt is now installed.