Unable to compile Qt because of missing litehtml

Tarae

Hello,

On my Debian 12.2 system, I am attempting to compile Qt. I have installed all the dependencies as outlined in the documentation at https://doc.qt.io/qt-6/build-sources.html.

After that, I executed the following commands:

sourceDir=/opt/foo/qt_source
buildDir=/opt/foo/qt_build
installDir=/opt/foo/qt6.6.1-gcc-deb12

mkdir -p "$sourceDir" "$buildDir" "$installDir"

# get qt
cd "$sourceDir"
wget https://download.qt.io/official_releases/qt/6.6/6.6.1/single/qt-everywhere-src-6.6.1.tar.xz
tar xf qt-everywhere-src-6.6.1.tar.xz

# configure
cd "$buildDir"
configureScript=${sourceDir}/qt-everywhere-src-6.6.1/configure
$configureScript -prefix "$installDir" -release -sql-psql
 
#build
cmake --build . --parallel

However, my build encountered an error with the following message:

[44/3358] Building CXX object qttools/src/assistant/qlitehtml/src/CMakeFiles/qlitehtml.dir/container_qpainter.cpp.o
FAILED: qttools/src/assistant/qlitehtml/src/CMakeFiles/qlitehtml.dir/container_qpainter.cpp.o 
/usr/bin/c++ -DQLITEHTML_STATIC_LIBRARY -DQT_CORE_LIB -DQT_GUI_LIB -DQT_NO_CAST_TO_ASCII -DQT_NO_JAVA_STYLE_ITERATORS -DQT_RESTRICTED_CAST_FROM_ASCII -DQT_USE_QSTRINGBUILDER -DQT_WIDGETS_LIB -I/opt/foo/qt_build/qttools/src/assistant/qlitehtml/src/qlitehtml_autogen/include -I/opt/foo/qt_source/qt-everywhere-src-6.6.1/qttools/src/assistant/qlitehtml/src -I/opt/foo/qt_build/qtbase/include -I/opt/foo/qt_build/qtbase/include/QtWidgets -I/opt/foo/qt_build/qtbase/include/QtCore -I/opt/foo/qt_source/qt-everywhere-src-6.6.1/qtbase/mkspecs/linux-g++ -I/opt/foo/qt_build/qtbase/include/QtGui -DNDEBUG -O2 -fPIC -fvisibility=hidden -fvisibility-inlines-hidden -w -fPIC -std=c++17 -MD -MT qttools/src/assistant/qlitehtml/src/CMakeFiles/qlitehtml.dir/container_qpainter.cpp.o -MF qttools/src/assistant/qlitehtml/src/CMakeFiles/qlitehtml.dir/container_qpainter.cpp.o.d -o qttools/src/assistant/qlitehtml/src/CMakeFiles/qlitehtml.dir/container_qpainter.cpp.o -c /opt/foo/qt_source/qt-everywhere-src-6.6.1/qttools/src/assistant/qlitehtml/src/container_qpainter.cpp
In file included from /opt/foo/qt_source/qt-everywhere-src-6.6.1/qttools/src/assistant/qlitehtml/src/container_qpainter.cpp:5:
/opt/foo/qt_source/qt-everywhere-src-6.6.1/qttools/src/assistant/qlitehtml/src/container_qpainter_p.h:8:10: fatal error: litehtml.h: No such file or directory
    8 | #include <litehtml.h>
      |          ^~~~~~~~~~~~
compilation terminated.
[49/3358] Building CXX object qttools/src/designer/src/components/lib/CMakeFiles/DesignerComponentsPrivate.dir/cmake_pch.hxx.gch
ninja: build stopped: subcommand failed.

I have confirmed that I have the 'litehtml' packages installed:

$ apt install liblitehtml-dev liblitehtml0
liblitehtml-dev is already the newest version (0.6-1).
liblitehtml0 is already the newest version (0.6-1).

Do you have any ideas on what might be causing this issue and how to solve it?
Thank you for your help.

Axel Spoerl

Good morning @Tarae,

something is wrong with the Qt installation.
litehtml should be included in the qttools submodule, as a 3rd party library.

What does
ll $sourceDir/qttools/src/assistant/qlitehtml/src/3rdparty/litehtml/include
say?

Cheers
Axel

andr

@Tarae : is the src/assistant/qlitehtml git submodule checked out?

Tarae

$ ls -la /opt/foo/qt_source/qt-everywhere-src-6.6.1/qttools/src/assistant/qlitehtml/src/3rdparty/litehtml/include/
drwxr-xr-x 2 root root 4096 Nov 20 12:56 litehtml
-rw-r--r-- 1 root root  214 Nov 20 12:56 litehtml.h
-rw-r--r-- 1 root root 4118 Nov 20 12:56 master.css

Axel Spoerl

@Tarae
So the include reported missing actually exists.
Is your build tree clean, or could it potentially contain stale legacy CMake files?

JonB

@Axel-Spoerl , @Tarae
Where in what has been shown does any qttools/src/assistant/qlitehtml/src/3rdparty/litehtml/include appear on the include path, e.g. in a -I... option?

Tarae

@Axel-Spoerl before running the configure script my $buildDir was empty.

Axel Spoerl

@JonB
configureshould deal with that, and it apparently attempts to do so:

-I/opt/foo/qt_build/qttools/src/assistant/qlitehtml/src/qlitehtml_autogen/include

And that's about where the include is located in my own toplevel build, which builds nicely. So qttoolsisn't properly installed, broken or disturbed by legacy files in the build tree. If the error persists with a completely clean build tree, there might be a bug in the snapshot.

Tarae

@Axel-Spoerl my /opt/foo/qt_build/qttools/src/assistant/qlitehtml/src/qlitehtml_autogen/include directory is empty. Should it include the litehtml.h file? Is it expected to be populated after running the configure script, or is it not copied there until the actual build process?

Axel Spoerl

@Tarae
At least, this is the location, where CMake tells the compiler to search for it.
Something is broken here, but I don't have a 6.6.1 build with qttools handy.

Axel Spoerl

@Axel-Spoerl
You could try to pass -Dlitehtml_DIR=/path/to/local/litehtmlto the compiler and see what it does.

JonH

I know this thread is a few months old but my solution was to remove the liblitehtml-dev package from the system. Having this package installed appears to confuse the Qt6 build process (Qt 6.6.3 in my instance). Removing this package enabled me to successfully run the Qt6 build process using the internally provided litehtml library.

drwho 0

I ran into this issue with Qt6.7 (Debian 12). Uninstalling liblitehtml-dev also fixed building in Qt6.7. Oddly, I was able to build Qt 6.6.3 with liblitehtml-dev installed. Thanks for posting this solution.