Building Qt 5.2.1 in latest Visual Studios

mwpowellhtx

How to build without the WebKit or other unnecessary (for our purposes) parts? Those are not listed in the help.

sierdzio

[quote author="mwpowellhtx" date="1393690963"]MINGW is a hard requirement? Or we can build with MSVC? i.e. XPLATFORM_MINGW=yes[/quote]

JKSH has already told you, that MSVC is fine... I usually use MSVC 2010 and it works well.

No, MinGW is not needed. Actually, Qt will not work if you mix MSVC and MinGW.

[quote]How to build without the WebKit or other unnecessary (for our purposes) parts? Those are not listed in the help.[/quote]

"skip" command is your friend. Alternatively, you can just delete the module folder. It should still compile fine. Here is what I use to compile Qt on Windows:
@
configure -opensource -confirm-license -opengl desktop -mp -skip webkit -skip qtquick1 -nomake tests -nomake examples -prefix CD/qtbase
@

CD must be enclosed with pecentage signs (I can't put them here on forum; the system blocks it). Compilation takes 15 minutes on Linux, and about an hour on Windows (for a quad-core CPU with HT).

sierdzio

And to specify the compiler, you need to use "-platform" flag (and then just pass one of the mkspecs).

mwpowellhtx

Again, maybe I am bigoted re: configure, but where are the <parts> listed in the help? This is not a Qt problem, per se, but an "accepted convention", would-be mid-range end-users such as myself are simply expected to "know" what to nomake or skip. Anyhow, I cannot seem to see help again since the last failed attempt: command not found. So I need start fresh it seems... Oi. BTW, I am following the steps on the build page, but it's not very well outlined: Building Qt 5 from Git. I would like to build with JOM if I can somehow make that work, since I have 8 cores, to cut the time down some.

sierdzio

IIRC "parts" is more or less Qt modules.

mwpowellhtx

That's not what I was asking. I get that: parts == modules. What I was asking is: where are the list of parts? Generally, configure(s) do not list these, and it is annoying as hell.

mwpowellhtx

What would a configure look like: we're not doing any Qt UI, we want QtCore only. I tried even the earlier configure, and it chokes:

I:\Source\qt5>configure -opensource -confirm-license -opengl desktop -mp -skip webkit -skip qtquick1 -nomake tests -nomake examples -prefix CD/qtbase

cd qtbase
I:\Source\qt5\qtbase\configure.bat -top-level -opensource -confirm-license -opengl desktop -mp -skip webkit -skip qtquick1 -nomake tests -nomake examples -prefix CD/qtbase
Please wait while bootstrapping configure ...
<srcbase> = I:/Source/qt5/qtbase
<outbase> = I:/Source/qt5/qtbase

    cl -c -Yc -nologo -Zm200 -Zc:wchar_t -MT -W3 -GR -EHsc -w34100 -w34189 -DUNICODE -DQT_NO_CODECS -DQT_NO_TEXTCODEC -DQT_NO_UNICODETABLES -DQT_LITE_COMPONENT -DQT_NO_COMPRESS -DQT_NO_THREAD -DQT_NO_QOBJECT -DQT_NO_GEOM_VARIANT -D_CRT_SECURE_NO_DEPRECATE -DQT_BOOTSTRAPPED -DQT_BUILD_CONFIGURE -DCOMMERCIAL_VERSION -I"..\..\include" -I"..\..\include\QtCore" -I"..\..\include\QtCore\5.3.0" -I"..\..\include\QtCore\5.3.0\QtCore" -I"I:\Source\qt5\qtbase\tools\shared" -I"I:\Source\qt5\qtbase\mkspecs\win32-msvc2008" -Fpconfigure_pch.pch -Foconfigure_pch.obj -TP I:\Source\qt5\qtbase\tools\configure\configure_pch.h

NMAKE : fatal error U1077: '"C:\Program Files (x86)\Microsoft Visual Studio 11.0\VC\bin\cl.EXE"' : return code '0xc0000135'
Stop.

mwpowellhtx

I am thinking that my environment is confused, but I don't know if it's a configuration issues, the fact that I've got VS2010 and VS2012 and VS2013 all installed, or what.

I may give the installer a gander after all and see if it will at least get us by. Would be nice if I could get past this issue though.

sierdzio

Here is a list of all modules: "link":http://qt-project.org/doc/qt-5/qtmodules.html.

Seems like you are using wrong mkspecs. Are you running that from your MSVC-enabled command line? To make the compiler choice specific, add this to configure:
@
-platform win32-msvc2013
@

(or msvc2012, depending on your choice). If you really, really just need QtCore, it will probably take some iterations to nail a working configure line, as it is a highly specific use case (most people compile whole Qt, some skip webkit and QtQuick1, but almost nobody goes further :P).

I'll give you 2 ways to do it, but there are many more.

remove all folders from your Qt dir, except for qtbase, qttools and qtdoc, then run configure as usual. This will still not be ideal for you: modules like QtNetwork are inside qtbase (but it is a small module, compiles in seconds)

keep patiently removing all Qt modules with -skip flag...

sierdzio

OK, I'll throw in the third way: run the configure line as usual, but then don't run the global Makefile. Instead, cd into qtbase and run nmake (or jom) there. This should only build QtCore, QtNetwork, and other base modules.

mwpowellhtx

As long as I can identify them (more or less), yes. Thanks for the tips (and the patience!)...

mwpowellhtx

I added -platform win32-mscv2012, and same error. Yes, I need an MSVC command line?

mwpowellhtx

I'm just reading the notes: http://qt-project.org/wiki/Building_Qt_5_from_Git

And nowhere after configure does it say to CD qtbase when using jom, or any of the other options. Or maybe I am reading it wrong?

Oh! Bit of a clue: the prefix is where the stuff lands, so that's why...

I am spoiled by IDEs, workspace and project files, which are a dialect all their own...

sierdzio

Qt is being built based on Makefiles (which are being normally read and executed by make on Unix and nmake on Windows). When you run "configure", it will do the following for you:

bootstrap Qt tools (namely: create qmake binary, which is then used to generate Makefiles, create moc and friends)
generate main Makefile
generate a separate Makefile for every module

So. Standard Qt compilation instructions (the ones you have inked) instruct you to just run "nmake". This will run the main Makefile, which in turn runs all module Makefiles.

But you are not forced to do it: if you simply cd into any module and run nmake there, only that single module will be compiled.

All resulting libraries and binaries are always put into qtbase.

Having said all this, I still think that if you are a "mid-range" end user, you should not be concerned about all this: just grab the precompiled Qt installer, or compile the whole package without getting into advanced and custom configuration. You will probably waste much more time trying to compile Qt in your specific way (we are already talking for the whole day), especially on Windows where things tend to break every time Microsoft decides to bless us all with an update to their compiler.

Now, getting to that error. It seems to be coming from precompiled headers. I don't remember the dev consensus exactly, but it might be that headers are precompiled in the .zip package. I am no expert here, but they may not be compatible with MSVC 2k13 (MS has a habit of breaking the compatibility on a regular basis). In that case, you may have more luck checking out from git (but that will take a long time + pull the Perl dependency).

mwpowellhtx

Ah, I didn't need to change dir to qtbase, there is no Makefile there. Actually it's in the <path/to/qt5>.

mwpowellhtx

Configure done. Now jom is running. Coffee, movie...

mwpowellhtx

I'd agree with the installer approach if I was the only end-user. We're supporting software across platforms, so need the flexibility to build it how we want across platforms.

I'm not sure how long the build runs (2 cores, 1 hour?), or if JOM is actually helping at all. At least it's building. We'll see...

mwpowellhtx

Actually, the build was finishing just as I wrote that...

mwpowellhtx

So... ~50 minutes, give or take. JOM helped a little? More cores, maybe a non factor. Not sure if I set the CL to /MP, now that I think about it. I'm sure it could be helped.

mwpowellhtx

Okay, now what? I've got some includes to include, and some cmakes in CD to make?

Actually I see a bunch of promising output in qtbase/lib to go with the includes.