Documentation/4.3/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

• To use QtCreator and the Slicer designer plugins, a possible option is to build QtCreator against the installed Qt libraries. See discussion on the mailing list.

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

Download links

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

	Linux		Mac		Windows
			Leopard, SnowLeopard, Lion	Mountain Lion	VS2008		VS2010
	32bits	64bits	64bits	64bits	32bits	64bits	32bits	64bits
Qt source link	4.7.4		4.7.4	4.8.4	4.7.4		4.7.4
Qt binary link	SDK-1.2	SDK-1.2	4.7.4 4.7.4 (optional: debug libs)	4.8.4 4.8.4 (optional: debug libs)	4.7.4	(src build only)	4.8.4	(src build only)

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 minimum required version.

• See 898bb14e, r19698, Mailing list

Build instructions

Linux

• 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

• Use a windows extracter to unzip the Qt archive, don't use cygwin unzip it.

Qt 4.7.4 / VS2008

• Rename the folder into for example qt-4.7.4-64-vs2008-rel.
  • Note: Each build of Qt should be done it its own folder !
  • Note: A 32 bit debug build would be done in a folder named qt-4.7.4-32-vs2008-deb

• Launch the msvc2008 command prompt
  • 32-bit build: Start menu -> MSVC08->Tools -> "Visual Studio 2008 Command Prompt"
  • 64-bit build: Start menu -> MSVC08->Tools -> "Visual Studio 2008 x64 Win64 Command Prompt"

• Configure
  • For debug: configure.exe -platform win32-msvc2008 -opensource -confirm-license -debug -webkit -nomake examples -nomake demos
  • For release: configure.exe -platform win32-msvc2008 -opensource -confirm-license -release -webkit -nomake examples -nomake demos
  • Note: win32-msvc2008 is used for both 32 and 64-bit.
  • 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.

• Build using 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].

Qt 4.8.5 / VS2010

• Rename the folder into for example qt-4.8.5-64-vs2010-rel.
  • Note: Each build of Qt should be done it its own folder !
  • Note: A 32 bit debug build would be done in a folder named qt-4.8.5-32-vs2010-deb

• Launch the msvc2010 command prompt
  • 32-bit build: Start menu -> MSVC10->Tools -> "Visual Studio 2010 Command Prompt"
  • 64-bit build: Start menu -> MSVC10->Tools -> "Visual Studio 2010 x64 Win64 Command Prompt"

• Download pearl http://strawberryperl.com/ and create a new folder into for example strawberry.

• Download jom and create a new folder into for example jom.
  • Add this new folder into the path (system properties)

• Configure
  • For debug: configure.exe -platform win32-msvc2010 -debug -opensource -confirm-license -webkit -nomake examples -nomake demos
  • For release: configure.exe -platform win32-msvc2010 -release -opensource -confirm-license -webkit -nomake examples -nomake demos
  • Note: win32-msvc2010 is used for both 32 and 64-bit.
  • Note: The option -prefix doesn't work on Windows.

• Build using jom -jn
  • Note: n is the number of cores of your CPU, so adapt it.
  • 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 jom. For more info, please see QTBug 6470].