Documentation/4.0/Developers/Build Instructions/Prerequisites/Qt

For the latest Slicer documentation, visit the read-the-docs.

Binary vs build-from-source ?

If you build Slicer on ...

Linux

• Using binary works great for both Debug and Release build of Slicer. See #Download_links and #Installation_instruction

Mac

• Using binary works great for both Debug and Release build of Slicer. See #Download_links and #Installation_instruction

Windows

Debug (32 and 64-bit) or Release (64-bit)

• You have to build Qt from source. See #Download_links and #Installation_instruction

• Details: Using the Qt Designer on Windows requires that the Slicer plugins are in the same mode as Qt. If Qt was compiled in Release mode (default), Slicer would have to be compiled in Release mode as well. However if Qt is compiled in Debug mode only, Slicer has to be compiled in Debug too. When Qt is in "Release and Debug" mode only the Release version of Designer.exe is generated, Slicer would have to be compiled in Release. So for developers, the Debug mode is recommended, this is why we detail the compilation of Qt below.

Release (32-bit)

• Using binary works great for 32-bit Release build of Slicer. See #Download_links and #Installation_instruction

Download Qt: Source and Binaries

That said, if you feel like experimenting, nothing prevent you from building against a difference version.

Download links

The following table list the link allowing to download either the recommended source code or binary of Qt.

	Linux		Mac		Windows
			Tiger	Leopard, SnowLeopard	VS2008		VS2010
	32bits	64bits	32bits	64bits	32bits	64bits	32bits	64bits
Qt source link	4.7.4		4.7.4	4.7.4	4.7.4		4.7.4
Qt binary link	SDK-1.2	SDK-1.2	carbon_4.7.0	cocoa_4.7.4	4.7.4	-	4.7.4	-

Installation instruction

Linux

See Qt installation guide (4.7.4, Linux, 64-bit, Offline)

Mac

TBD

Windows

TBD

Qt version specific issues

All

• Qt 4.6.x on windows (and possibly in linux/mac): No image base64 support in QLabel/QTooltips (work around exists though)
• Qt 4.8 does not work with PythonQt in slicer4 - suggested version is 4.7.4

Linux

• NA

Mac

• Qt 4.6: hard to compile - TBD: Be more specific
• Qt 4.7: click outside of popup (http://na-mic.org/Mantis/view.php?id=1241) - Is it fixed in Qt 4.8 ?
• Qt 4.7.3: http://na-mic.org/Mantis/view.php?id=1388 - Fixed in Qt 4.7.4

Windows

• NA

How to change the minimum required version ?

• It's indeed possible to use a different version, just be aware that moving forward in time, things may not work as expected. Even worse Slicer may simply fail to compile.

• By configuring Slicer using -DSlicer_REQUIRED_QT_VERSION:STRING=4.7.0, you will be able to change the required version.

• See 898bb14e, r19698, Mailing list

Build instructions

Linux

• Your Qt must be OpenGL enabled. On debian, install: libgl1-mesa-glx libglu1-mesa-glx
• Consider installing the following optional packages (libxt-dev libxrender-dev libxrandr-dev libxinerama-dev libxcursor-dev libfontconfig-dev libglib2.0-dev)

mkdir qt-everywhere-opensource-build-4.7.4
tar xvfz qt-everywhere-opensource-src-4.7.4.tar.gz
cd qt-everywhere-opensource-src-4.7.4
./configure -prefix ../qt-everywhere-opensource-build-4.7.4 -debug-and-release -opensource -confirm-license -no-qt3support -webkit -nomake examples -nomake demos
make -j8
make install

Note: Adapt -j8 with the number of core on your machine, a dual core should probably not do more than -j3, an 8 core machine can resonably go as much as -j12.

Mac

Similar to Linux configuration. Note that -arch x86_64 has been added.

For earlier versions of Xcode and Mac OS X

mkdir qt-everywhere-opensource-build-4.7.4
tar xvfz qt-everywhere-opensource-src-4.7.4.tar.gz
cd qt-everywhere-opensource-src-4.7.4
./configure -prefix ../qt-everywhere-opensource-build-4.7.4 -debug-and-release -opensource -confirm-license -no-qt3support -webkit -arch x86_64 -nomake examples -nomake demos -sdk /Developer/SDKs/MacOSX10.5.sdk/
make -j8
make install

On the latest Xcode versions (4.3) and Lion (10.7) the Developer directories have moved. The command is now:

./configure -prefix ../qt-everywhere-opensource-build-4.7.4 -debug-and-release -opensource -confirm-license -no-qt3support -arch x86_64 -nomake examples -nomake demos -webkit -sdk /Applications/Xcode.app/Contents/Developer/Platforms/MacOSX.platform/Developer/SDKs/MacOSX10.7.sdk

• Consider reading: http://doc.qt.nokia.com/4.7/developing-on-mac.html)

• Note:
  • If building against SDK 10.6 or 10.7, you will probably get link errors similar to what's described in [1] and [2]. The solution is probably to disable the corewlan module but didn't figure out to do that properly.

Windows

1. Use a windows extracter to unzip the Qt archive, don't use cygwin unzip it.
2. launch the msvc2008 command prompt (MSVC08->Tools->Visual Studio 2008 CommandPrompt) (or: launch cmd.exe and run vcvars32.bat) Note: Start x64 prompt from Start menu (don't start from inside visual studio or it will be an x86 32 bit shell). Menu item is "Visual Studio 2008 x64 Win64 Command Prompt"
3. build with configure.exe -platform win32-msvc2008 -debug -nomake examples -nomake demos
   • When asked, choose open source license type (o), then accept the license (y)
   • Note: the configure options are exactly the same for 32-bit and 64-bit builds (the platform is always win32-msvc2008)
   • Note: the option -prefix doesn't work on Windows.
   • Note: According to [3] Qt does not support msvc2008 on windows xp. However, running configure.exe with no -platform argument seems to work. If you run configure with the -platform argument first by mistake, and if configure -clean doesn't work, then you may need to start from a fresh extraction from the .zip archive before running configure.exe again with no -platform, unless you can run nmake with the config clean target.
   • Note: for Microsoft Visual Studio 2010 users, Qt 4.6.3 is hard to configure with MSVC2010, use Qt 4.7.x instead. Build with set QMAKESPEC=win32-msvc2010 and configure -platform win32-msvc2010 -debug
4. run nmake
   • Note: building with webkit support requires that src/3rdparty/webkit/WebCore/tmp/moc/{debug,release}_shared/mocinclude.tmp be removed. else you will get linker errors like QNetworkReplyHandler.obj : error LNK2001: unresolved external symbol "public: virtual struct QMetaObject const * __thiscall WebCore::FormDataIODevice::metaObject(void)const (?metaObject@FormDataIODevice@WebCore@@UBEPBUQMetaObject@@XZ)
   • Note: If you encounter the following error api\qscriptextensionplugin.h(43): Error: Undefined interface,, delete the files \src\script\tmp\moc\debug_shared\mocinclude.tmp and \src\script\tmp\moc\release_shared\mocinclude.tmp and restart nmake. For more info, please see QTBug 6470].

Special instructions for compiling Qt 4.7.4 with Visual Studio 2010 (not yet supported officially):

• Visual Studio 2010 should be installed, as well as SP1 and compiler update.
• To compile Qt 4.7.4 using VS2010 Express or Professional, see this tutorial (Skip step 3 if using Express version).
• At step 11 of the tutorial, replace option -no-webkit by -webkit (required to build Slicer).