Harald Fernengel
Qt
Maemo
 in Qt, Maemo
 on Wednesday, March 17, 2010 @ 15:28

The Qt 4.7 Tech Preview has been released a while ago, and we’ve gotten a lot of requests to package it for the N900.

Read on if you want to live on the bleeding edge :)

The good news is that the Qt for Maemo 5 repository got a 4.7-fremantle branch that contains a relatively up to date Qt 4.7 with all Maemo 5 changes, the even better news is that we’ve updated the Debian packaging files to support the new Qt 4.7 features (namely QtDeclarative), and the best news in this already far too long sentence is that we’ve created packages for your convenience at http://chaos.troll.no/~harald/qt4-maemo5-4.7/.

To download all the *.deb packages from the page above, you can use wget:
wget --accept \*.deb -e robots=off -r -nd -np http://chaos.troll.no/~harald/qt4-maemo5-4.7/

To install Qt 4.7 into the Scratchbox based SDK (warning - this will overwrite the Qt 4.6 in /opt/qt4-maemo5):

dpkg -i *.deb

On the device, install all the *.deb packages except for the *-dev and the *-dbg ones (debug symbols on the device are useless when remote debugging).

To uninstall, run:

apt-get remove .\*qt4-maemo5.\*

Disclaimer: This is a tech preview. Please only install if you would like to contribute to Qt 4.7 for Maemo 5, or if you want to play around with the latest Qt 4.7 features, knowing that all new code might change and you might have to toss your prototypes.

The road ahead: Once the PR 1.2 release of Maemo 5 is out, the Qt 4.7 packages will replace the Qt 4.6 packages in the extras-devel repository. The stable Qt 4.6 will reside in /usr, the unstable (and optional) Qt 4.7 in /opt/qt4-maemo5.

Happy hacking from your Qt for Maemo 5 team :)

16 Responses to “Experimental Qt 4.7 packages for the N900”

» Posted by Mathias
 on Wednesday, March 17, 2010 @ 17:44

Sweet!

The wget command does not work though. On the N900 wget does not appear to exist (can I install it?) and on my Linux box it times out, perhaps because I’m behind the Nokia proxy?
Guess I’ll have to download them one by one with the browser…

» Posted by David B
 on Wednesday, March 17, 2010 @ 21:04

Slightly off topic, but in following the Maemo repository link it points to something with X11 in its repository link. Does Maemo use X11, and if so why is this since Trolltech (Nokia) has gone to great lengths to get Qt Embedded working without X in the Linux Frame Buffer. Does this imply that X11 performance is better? Or is the reason for using X11 just historical being the Maemo was initially using Gnome. Will devices like the N900 eventually do away with X11 altogether ?

-David

PS
Don’t know if is real or just perceived, but your SDK’s have always seemed much harder to install and use then Android and WebOS (the only two I have tried) . Maybe it is because there are several steps in setting up your environment for Maemo. More steps means more opportunities for things to go awry. The other Phone OS’es really offer a complete SDK with only one or two items to download.

» Posted by Daniel Molkentin
 on Wednesday, March 17, 2010 @ 23:49

Mathias: yes, you will have to export http_proxy=proxyserver:port before using wget.

» Posted by wrosecrans
 on Thursday, March 18, 2010 @ 02:04

@DavidB , Yes, Maemo uses X11. Yes, Maemo has existed for longer than Trolltech has been a part of Nokia. Maemo5 (The current version, which is on the n900) still has a lot of GTK in it, so it’s not exactly a purely historical matter. The biggest reason to use X11 on such a device is that it vastly simplifies moving the universe of desktop Linux software onto Maemo. For a purely embedded application, being on the “bare metal” makes a lot of sense. OTOH, on something like an n900, where the user expects to be able to install a very wide range of software, and invent all sorts of unintended uses, it makes a lot of sense to try and stick to as “normal” of a Linux stack as possible. For example, it has allowed me to use X11 forwarding over SSH to display applications on my n900 while they execute on my Linux desktop.

No real reason to eventually do away with X11 on devices like the n900. It would be a lot of work with no actual accomplishment.

» Reply from Harald Fernengel
 on Thursday, March 18, 2010 @ 10:47
Harald Fernengel

@David B: As wrosecrans said, X11 is on the N900 due to compatibility. Qt Embedded is targeted at even more embedded devices that just run Qt UIs.

As for the SDK, we’re working on it, no worries :)

» Posted by juand
 on Thursday, March 18, 2010 @ 12:11

I trayed to install but it sayed that i don’t have enough space.. so I tray to uninstall something but the catalogs on the application manager have disapear.
what can I do?

» Posted by koichi mori
 on Thursday, March 18, 2010 @ 17:54

@juand you perhaps installed all the packages. I did it and I got root file system full too. Don’t install dbg or dev packages. uninstalling unnecessary those dbg/dev packages using apt-get might help.

» Posted by KK
 on Thursday, March 18, 2010 @ 19:08

I just wanted to know that as I am new to all of the linux side and maemo as well, can I use these deb files to install on my n900 and get some new features in my phone ? m actually a noob to programming in the linux environment, I am just a regular mobile user. I just dont know what is QT. I just liked the phone so I bought it. So is it some kind of firmware update that I can install on n900 ? or these files are for the maemo developing purpose only ? thnx.

» Posted by detro
 on Thursday, March 18, 2010 @ 19:34

MEGALOL. I explain why.
I was on my way to just take the 4.7-tp1 released few days ago and compile it.
Then I thought “if I do, I’ll probably get something missing for Maemo5 + the instructions here will not build declarative, disabled by default”.

So, I thought of asking Google for “build qt 4.7 on maemo 5″. And it brought me here!

Guys, give me the time to realize my thought before implementing them ;)

Translation: thanks a lot for doing it in my place! ;)

» Posted by juand
 on Thursday, March 18, 2010 @ 22:16

thanks coichi mori but I think I just installed the . deb packages… could you please help me step by step how to uninstall the unnecessary packages…

» Posted by Daniel Molkentin
 on Friday, March 19, 2010 @ 06:47

KK: Simple advise: It’s interesting for development only. It is not a firmware upgrade that benefits end users directly. Thus, normal users should stay away from it.

» Posted by koichi mori
 on Friday, March 19, 2010 @ 20:16

Are Video, Audio, and WebView supposed to work with QML in this version? I put imports like “import Qt 4.7″ and “import org.webkit 1.0″ but I only get type unavailable error.

» Posted by koichi mori
 on Friday, March 19, 2010 @ 20:41

@juand what I told unnecessary are also .deb package. If you look at file name of .deb packages, you’ll notice some of them have “dev” or “dbg” in the middle. you can, for instance, just delete those unnecessary .deb files before installing. See the main article above how to uninstall whole qt4.7 stuffs. Basically use apt-get remove.

» Posted by detro
 on Monday, March 29, 2010 @ 20:11

New packages just built? ;)

» Posted by George
 on Thursday, April 08, 2010 @ 14:09

Please can I get some help? Ive purchased my n900 about a month ago and I came accross this Qt forum but I have no idea what it is or how to ‘install’ it on my phone. Pls can someone help me?

» Posted by Covid
 on Friday, April 30, 2010 @ 09:02

I followed the instruction, but it said, “not found” what should i do?
thanks

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