Problem building qtbase from source

[Tom asso]

I’ve downloaded the offline installer qt-opensource-linux-x64-5.14.2.run file onto my ubuntu 18.04 system. Executing that .run file a few months ago seemed to build all of the Qt libraries, and I’ve been linking may application against them with no problem since then. Now I want to modify some code in the qtbase libraries and I want to build with ‘make’. So I cd to $QT_HOME/5.14.2/Src/qtbase, and I type ‘qmake’; this prompts me with questions about which edition I want to use and whether I accept the license terms, and then qmake configures things for the Makefile (I put the output at the end of this post). I then run ‘make’ which runs for about an hour but then fails:

make[2]: Entering directory '/home/oreilly/Qt5.14.2/5.14.2/Src/qtbase/qmake'
make[2]: *** No rule to make target 'binary'.  Stop.
make[2]: Leaving directory '/home/oreilly/Qt5.14.2/5.14.2/Src/qtbase/qmake'
Makefile.qmake-aux:965: recipe for target '/home/oreilly/Qt5.14.2/5.14.2/Src/qtbase/qmake/qmake' failed
make[1]: *** [/home/oreilly/Qt5.14.2/5.14.2/Src/qtbase/qmake/qmake] Error 2

Does anyone know why? Below is the output from the ‘qmake’ step.
Thanks!

Selecting Qt Edition.
 
Type 'c' if you want to use the Commercial Edition.
Type 'o' if you want to use the Open Source Edition.
 
Which edition of Qt do you want to use? 
This is the Qt Open Source Edition.
 
You are licensed to use this software under the terms of
the GNU Lesser General Public License (LGPL) version 3
or the GNU General Public License (GPL) version 2.
 
Type 'L' to view the GNU Lesser General Public License version 3 (LGPLv3).
Type 'G' to view the GNU General Public License version 2 (GPLv2).
Type 'y' to accept this license offer.
Type 'n' to decline this license offer.
 
Do you accept the terms of either license? 
 
Running configuration tests...
Done running configuration tests.
 
Configure summary:
 
Build type: linux-g++ (x86_64, CPU features: mmx sse sse2)
Compiler: gcc 7.5.0
Configuration: sse2 aesni sse3 ssse3 sse4_1 sse4_2 avx avx2 avx512f avx512bw avx512cd avx512dq avx512er avx512ifma avx512pf avx512vbmi avx512vl compile_examples enable_new_dtags f16c largefile precompile_header rdrnd shani x86SimdAlways shared shared rpath release c++11 c++14 c++1z concurrent dbus reduce_exports reduce_relocations stl
Build options:
  Mode ................................... release
  Optimize release build for size ........ no
  Building shared libraries .............. yes
  Using C standard ....................... C11
  Using C++ standard ..................... C++17
  Using ccache ........................... no
  Using new DTAGS ........................ yes
  Relocatable ............................ yes
  Using precompiled headers .............. yes
  Using LTCG ............................. no
  Target compiler supports:
    SSE .................................. SSE2 SSE3 SSSE3 SSE4.1 SSE4.2
    AVX .................................. AVX AVX2
    AVX512 ............................... F ER CD PF DQ BW VL IFMA VBMI
    Other x86 ............................ AES F16C RDRAND SHA
    Intrinsics without -mXXX option ...... yes
  Build parts ............................ libs examples tools
Qt modules and options:
  Qt Concurrent .......................... yes
  Qt D-Bus ............................... yes
  Qt D-Bus directly linked to libdbus .... no
  Qt Gui ................................. yes
  Qt Network ............................. yes
  Qt Sql ................................. yes
  Qt Testlib ............................. yes
  Qt Widgets ............................. yes
  Qt Xml ................................. yes
Support enabled for:
  Using pkg-config ....................... yes
  udev ................................... no
  Using system zlib ...................... yes
  Zstandard support ...................... no
Qt Core:
  DoubleConversion ....................... yes
    Using system DoubleConversion ........ no
  GLib ................................... yes
  iconv .................................. no
  ICU .................................... yes
  Built-in copy of the MIME database ..... yes
  Tracing backend ........................ <none>
  Logging backends:
    journald ............................. no
    syslog ............................... no
    slog2 ................................ no
  PCRE2 .................................. yes
    Using system PCRE2 ................... no
Qt Network:
  getifaddrs() ........................... yes
  IPv6 ifname ............................ yes
  libproxy ............................... no
  Linux AF_NETLINK ....................... yes
  OpenSSL ................................ yes
    Qt directly linked to OpenSSL ........ no
  OpenSSL 1.1 ............................ yes
  DTLS ................................... yes
  OCSP-stapling .......................... yes
  SCTP ................................... no
  Use system proxies ..................... yes
  GSSAPI ................................. no
Qt Gui:
  Accessibility .......................... yes
  FreeType ............................... yes
    Using system FreeType ................ yes
  HarfBuzz ............................... yes
    Using system HarfBuzz ................ yes
  Fontconfig ............................. yes
  Image formats:
    GIF .................................. yes
    ICO .................................. yes
    JPEG ................................. yes
      Using system libjpeg ............... yes
    PNG .................................. yes
      Using system libpng ................ yes
  Text formats:
    HtmlParser ........................... yes
    CssParser ............................ yes
    OdfWriter ............................ yes
    MarkdownReader ....................... yes
      Using system libmd4c ............... no
    MarkdownWriter ....................... yes
  EGL .................................... yes
  OpenVG ................................. no
  OpenGL:
    Desktop OpenGL ....................... yes
    OpenGL ES 2.0 ........................ no
    OpenGL ES 3.0 ........................ no
    OpenGL ES 3.1 ........................ no
    OpenGL ES 3.2 ........................ no
  Vulkan ................................. yes
  Session Management ..................... yes
Features used by QPA backends:
  evdev .................................. yes
  libinput ............................... no
  INTEGRITY HID .......................... no
  mtdev .................................. no
  tslib .................................. no
  xkbcommon .............................. no
  X11 specific:
    XLib ................................. yes
    XCB Xlib ............................. yes
    EGL on X11 ........................... yes
QPA backends:
  DirectFB ............................... no
  EGLFS .................................. yes
  EGLFS details:
    EGLFS OpenWFD ........................ no
    EGLFS i.Mx6 .......................... no
    EGLFS i.Mx6 Wayland .................. no
    EGLFS RCAR ........................... no
    EGLFS EGLDevice ...................... yes
    EGLFS GBM ............................ no
    EGLFS VSP2 ........................... no
    EGLFS Mali ........................... no
    EGLFS Raspberry Pi ................... no
    EGLFS X11 ............................ yes
  LinuxFB ................................ yes
  VNC .................................... yes
Qt Sql:
  SQL item models ........................ yes
Qt Widgets:
  GTK+ ................................... no
  Styles ................................. Fusion Windows
Qt PrintSupport:
  CUPS ................................... no
Qt Sql Drivers:
  DB2 (IBM) .............................. no
  InterBase .............................. no
  MySql .................................. yes
  OCI (Oracle) ........................... no
  ODBC ................................... yes
  PostgreSQL ............................. yes
  SQLite2 ................................ no
  SQLite ................................. yes
    Using system provided SQLite ......... no
  TDS (Sybase) ........................... no
Qt Testlib:
  Tester for item models ................. yes
 
Qt is now configured for building. Just run 'make'.
Once everything is built, you must run 'make install'.
Qt will be installed into '/home/oreilly/Qt/5.14.2/gcc_64'.
 
Prior to reconfiguration, make sure you remove any leftovers from
the previous build.

[jsulm]

@Tom-asso said in Problem building qtbase from source:

Executing that .run file a few months ago seemed to build all of the Qt libraries

It did not build anything as the installer contains prebuild libraries.

"and I type ‘qmake’" - use absolute path to qmake to make sure you use the correct qmake.
Also you should do out of source build:

mkdir qt_build
cd qt_build
PATH_TO_QMAKE/qmake PATH_TO_QT_SRC/qtbase
make -j 4

Use "-j n" parameter where n is the number of logical cores of your CPU. Will accelerate the build.

[Tom asso]

@jsulm - thanks, I followed your suggested steps, but make gets an error looking for a vulkan header:

% mkdir ~/qt-build
% cd ~/qt-build
 
% which qmake
/home/oreilly/Qt/5.14.2/gcc_64/bin/qmake  # This is the correct qmake
 
% qmake ~/Qt/5.14.2/Src/qtbase/ 2>&1 | tee qmake.out
% make -j 4 2>&1 | tee make.out
 
 [ After several minutes ]
 
/home/oreilly/Qt5.14.2/5.14.2/Src/qtbase/include/QtGui/5.14.2/QtGui/private/qvulkanfunctions_p.h:1:10: fatal error: ../../../../../src/gui/vulkan/qvulkanfunctions_p.h: No such file or directory
 #include "../../../../../src/gui/vulkan/qvulkanfunctions_p.h"
          ^~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
compilation terminated.

I do see that vulkan header file in my QT source directory, but in a different path (i.e. not in "src/gui/vulkan"):

$QT_HOME/5.14.2/Src/qtbase/include/QtGui/5.14.2/QtGui/private/qvulkanfunctions_p.h

qtbase/src/gui/vulkan contains qvulkanfunctions.cpp, but not the header file.

Here is the configuration summary generated by the qmake step:

Configure summary:

Build type: linux-g++ (x86_64, CPU features: mmx sse sse2)
Compiler: gcc 7.5.0
Configuration: sse2 aesni sse3 ssse3 sse4_1 sse4_2 avx avx2 avx512f avx512bw avx512cd avx512dq avx512er avx512ifma avx512pf avx512vbmi avx512vl compile_examples enable_new_dtags f16c largefile precompile_header rdrnd shani x86SimdAlways shared shared rpath release c++11 c++14 c++1z concurrent dbus reduce_exports reduce_relocations stl
Build options:
  Mode ................................... release
  Optimize release build for size ........ no
  Building shared libraries .............. yes
  Using C standard ....................... C11
  Using C++ standard ..................... C++17
  Using ccache ........................... no
  Using new DTAGS ........................ yes
  Relocatable ............................ yes
  Using precompiled headers .............. yes
  Using LTCG ............................. no
  Target compiler supports:
    SSE .................................. SSE2 SSE3 SSSE3 SSE4.1 SSE4.2
    AVX .................................. AVX AVX2
    AVX512 ............................... F ER CD PF DQ BW VL IFMA VBMI
    Other x86 ............................ AES F16C RDRAND SHA
    Intrinsics without -mXXX option ...... yes
  Build parts ............................ libs examples tools
Qt modules and options:
  Qt Concurrent .......................... yes
  Qt D-Bus ............................... yes
  Qt D-Bus directly linked to libdbus .... yes
  Qt Gui ................................. yes
  Qt Network ............................. yes
  Qt Sql ................................. yes
  Qt Testlib ............................. yes
  Qt Widgets ............................. yes
  Qt Xml ................................. yes
Support enabled for:
  Using pkg-config ....................... yes
  udev ................................... no
  Using system zlib ...................... yes
  Zstandard support ...................... no
Qt Core:
  DoubleConversion ....................... yes
    Using system DoubleConversion ........ no
  GLib ................................... yes
  iconv .................................. no
  ICU .................................... yes
  Built-in copy of the MIME database ..... yes
  Tracing backend ........................ <none>
  Logging backends:
    journald ............................. no
    syslog ............................... no
    slog2 ................................ no
  PCRE2 .................................. yes
    Using system PCRE2 ................... no
Qt Network:
  getifaddrs() ........................... yes
  IPv6 ifname ............................ yes
  libproxy ............................... no
  Linux AF_NETLINK ....................... yes
  OpenSSL ................................ yes
    Qt directly linked to OpenSSL ........ no
  OpenSSL 1.1 ............................ yes
  DTLS ................................... yes
  OCSP-stapling .......................... yes
  SCTP ................................... no
  Use system proxies ..................... yes
  GSSAPI ................................. no
Qt Gui:
  Accessibility .......................... yes
  FreeType ............................... yes
    Using system FreeType ................ yes
  HarfBuzz ............................... yes
    Using system HarfBuzz ................ yes
  Fontconfig ............................. yes
  Image formats:
    GIF .................................. yes
    ICO .................................. yes
    JPEG ................................. yes
      Using system libjpeg ............... yes
    PNG .................................. yes
      Using system libpng ................ yes
  Text formats:
    HtmlParser ........................... yes
    CssParser ............................ yes
    OdfWriter ............................ yes
    MarkdownReader ....................... yes
      Using system libmd4c ............... no
    MarkdownWriter ....................... yes
  EGL .................................... yes
  OpenVG ................................. no
  OpenGL:
    Desktop OpenGL ....................... yes
    OpenGL ES 2.0 ........................ no
    OpenGL ES 3.0 ........................ no
    OpenGL ES 3.1 ........................ no
    OpenGL ES 3.2 ........................ no
  Vulkan ................................. yes
  Session Management ..................... yes
Features used by QPA backends:
  evdev .................................. yes
  libinput ............................... no
  INTEGRITY HID .......................... no
  mtdev .................................. no
  tslib .................................. no
  xkbcommon .............................. no
  X11 specific:
    XLib ................................. yes
    XCB Xlib ............................. yes
    EGL on X11 ........................... yes
QPA backends:
  DirectFB ............................... no
  EGLFS .................................. yes
  EGLFS details:
    EGLFS OpenWFD ........................ no
    EGLFS i.Mx6 .......................... no
    EGLFS i.Mx6 Wayland .................. no
    EGLFS RCAR ........................... no
    EGLFS EGLDevice ...................... yes
    EGLFS GBM ............................ no
    EGLFS VSP2 ........................... no
    EGLFS Mali ........................... no
    EGLFS Raspberry Pi ................... no
    EGLFS X11 ............................ yes
  LinuxFB ................................ yes
  VNC .................................... yes
Qt Sql:
  SQL item models ........................ yes
Qt Widgets:
  GTK+ ................................... no
  Styles ................................. Fusion Windows
Qt PrintSupport:
  CUPS ................................... no
Qt Sql Drivers:
  DB2 (IBM) .............................. no
  InterBase .............................. no
  MySql .................................. yes
  OCI (Oracle) ........................... no
  ODBC ................................... yes
  PostgreSQL ............................. yes
  SQLite2 ................................ no
  SQLite ................................. yes
    Using system provided SQLite ......... no
  TDS (Sybase) ........................... no
Qt Testlib:
  Tester for item models ................. yes

Qt is now configured for building. Just run 'make'.
Once everything is built, you must run 'make install'.
Qt will be installed into '/home/oreilly/Qt/5.14.2/gcc_64'.

Prior to reconfiguration, make sure you remove any leftovers from
the previous build.

[SGaist]

Hi,

qtbase is not built with qmake.

If you modify it, just call make in the root folder of your qtbase build. You can be more precise using the Ce option with the sub folder you actually want to build.

[Tom asso]

Thanks @SGaist - we are still talking about the code installed by executing qt-opensource-linux-x64-5.14.2.run, right? Because I do not see a Makefile in the qtbase subdirectory:

% ls ~/Qt5.14.2/5.14.2/Src/qtbase/
bin              header.BSD          header.MIT           LICENSE.QT-LICENSE-AGREEMENT
config_help.txt  header.COMM         include              mkspecs
config.tests     header.FDL          INSTALL              qmake
configure        header.GPL          lib                  qtbase.pro
configure.bat    header.GPL-EXCEPT   LICENSE.FDL          src
configure.json   header.LGPL         LICENSE.GPL2         sync.profile
configure.pri    header.LGPL3        LICENSE.GPL3         tests
dist             header.LGPL3-COMM   LICENSE.GPL3-EXCEPT  util
doc              header.LGPL-NOGPL2  LICENSE.LGPL3
examples         header.LGPL-ONLY    LICENSE.LGPLv3

That's why I originally ran 'qmake' in that directory, to generate a Makefile from qtbase.pro. But running 'make' with the generated Makefile gives the "*** No rule to make target 'binary'" error after several minutes.

[SGaist]

To build qtbase, you have to call configure. qmake is built as part of the bootstrap process.

[Tom asso]

@SGaist Thanks again SGaist - my apologies for all the questions, but is the procedure for building sources that come from the downloaded .run file (e.g qt-opensource-linux-x64-5.14.2.run) documented somewhere? As you suggest, I now run ./configure (instead of qmake directly), but still have problems.

When I execute qt-opensource-linux-x64-5.14.2.run on my ubuntu 18.04 system, it places files including sources and shared libraries in $HOME/Qt5.14.2.. I can link my application with the shared libraries in $HOME/Qt5.14.2/5.14.2/gcc_64/

Now I want to modify some source files in Qt5.14.2 qtbase

% cd 5.14.2/Src/qtbase
% ./configure   # builds (and runs?) qmake, generates Makefile

Now if I run ‘make’ it successfully runs to completion. If I modify a qtbase source file and run ‘make’ again, it successfully builds. However ‘make’ rebuilds the libraries in 5.14.2/Src/qtbase/lib - but my app is linking with 5.14.2/gcc_64/lib. How do I “install” the rebuilt libraries into that directory? Is it ‘make install’? I tried “make install”, but it fails:

% make install
 
cd src/ && ( test -e Makefile || /home/oreilly/Qt5.14.2/5.14.2/Src/qtbase/bin/qmake -o Makefile /home/oreilly/Qt5.14.2/5.14.2/Src/qtbase/src/src.pro ) && make -f Makefile install
make[1]: Entering directory '/home/oreilly/Qt5.14.2/5.14.2/Src/qtbase/src'
cd tools/bootstrap/ && ( test -e Makefile || /home/oreilly/Qt5.14.2/5.14.2/Src/qtbase/bin/qmake -o Makefile /home/oreilly/Qt5.14.2/5.14.2/Src/qtbase/src/tools/bootstrap/bootstrap.pro ) && make -f Makefile install
make[2]: Entering directory '/home/oreilly/Qt5.14.2/5.14.2/Src/qtbase/src/tools/bootstrap'
/home/oreilly/Qt5.14.2/5.14.2/Src/qtbase/bin/qmake -install qinstall ../../../lib/libQt5Bootstrap.a /usr/local/Qt-5.14.2/lib/libQt5Bootstrap.a
Error copying ../../../lib/libQt5Bootstrap.a to /usr/local/Qt-5.14.2/lib/libQt5Bootstrap.a: Destination file exists
Makefile:14154: recipe for target 'install_target' failed
make[2]: *** [install_target] Error 3
make[2]: Leaving directory '/home/oreilly/Qt5.14.2/5.14.2/Src/qtbase/src/tools/bootstrap'
Makefile:82: recipe for target 'sub-bootstrap-install_subtargets' failed
make[1]: *** [sub-bootstrap-install_subtargets] Error 2
make[1]: Leaving directory '/home/oreilly/Qt5.14.2/5.14.2/Src/qtbase/src'
Makefile:62: recipe for target 'sub-src-install_subtargets' failed
make: *** [sub-src-install_subtargets] Error 2

If I just manually copy all libraries from 5.14.2/Src/qtbase/lib to 5.14.2/gcc_64/lib, then link my application with those, it gives this error:

/home/oreilly/Qt5.14.2/5.14.2/gcc_64/lib/libQt5Qml.so: undefined reference to `operator delete[](void*, unsigned long)@Qt_5'
/home/oreilly/Qt5.14.2/5.14.2/gcc_64/lib/libQt5Quick.so: undefined reference to `operator delete(void*, unsigned long)@Qt_5'
collect2: error: ld returned 1 exit status
Makefile:373: recipe for target 'mbgrdviz-2' failed

So I am still missing something...

[jsulm]

@Tom-asso Since you're you're installing into /usr/local you should call make install with sudo.

[Tom asso]

@jsulm - ah, you are right of course!

[SGaist]

Note that if you want to hack on Qt itself, you can use the developer-build and it will do an in place build. However it should not be used to build software releases as it toggles some flags for development.

[Tom asso]

@SGaist - could you please explain? What is the "developer build", and what is the "development.3" flag?
I would like to modify qtdatavisualization3d for my app, then freely distribute to users on a non-commercial basis - which source file should I be using in that case?
Thanks!

[SGaist]

The 3 was a typo.
As I wrote, it will trigger an in-place build, meaning that you won't have to call make install each time you want to test your modifications.

In that case, you should only build that module rather than the whole of Qt.

[Tom asso]

@SGaist - thanks. Earlier you mentioned a "Ce" option to specify a particular sub-folder to build. Can you please refer me to a page describing how to use that?
Thanks!

[Tom asso]

@SGaist - after building in-place with 'make', the libraries are scattered among many different subdirectories. What is the best way to link against those, when there are in so many different places?
Thanks!

[SGaist]

Did you do a build from scratch after adding that option to your configure line ?

With a developer build you should have all binaries in qtbase/bin and the libraries in qtbase/lib.

[Tom asso]

@SGaist - yes I see them there, thanks.
Earlier you mentioned a "Ce" option to specify a particular sub-folder to build. Can you please refer me to a page describing how to use that?
Thanks!

[Tom asso]

I do not see a qtcreator executable after building qt-everywhere-src-5.14.2. Is that expected?
I built with these configure options: -qt-xcb -recheck-all -debug -developer-build

[SGaist]

Yes it is to be expected, Qt Creator is a independent project.