Building and Deploying QT applications using Gitlab CI/CD (docker preferably)

lukutis222 · 7 Apr 2024, 11:52

Hello. I have a server that is dedicated for storing my application update files. Whenever I want to deploy new application, I pack all required files (.exe, .dll and etc) to .zip file and upload it to my server. On my server I also have a version.txt document that simply shows which version is the latest version of my application. When a user runs my application, it automatically sends a request to my server to check the version.txt document and it performs an update if required.

This process is tested and it works fine, however I do not like the fact that I have to manually build/deploy and upload my update.zip to the server, Ideally I would like to automate this process using Gitlab CI/CD pipeline.

I have used CI/CD for various other projects (mostly involved STM32 MCU's and I am able to build/deploy STM32 projects and place the requires files to the Gitlab as artifacts using specific Docker image that is able to build STM32 projects. I am hoping to do the same with QT application.

I have tried to find Docker image for building QT applications but I was not able to find any (I have found a few but they were last updated 5-6 years ago so they do not support latest QT versions). Perhaps someone have experience with QT applications build/deploy automation process and could throw some ideas?

KH-219Design · wrote on 4 Jul 2024, 17:24

Here is a sample project that I help maintain. It uses Github CI "runner" machines, which is very github-specific.

However, despite the fact that the Github "runner" has a lot of packages preinstalled, the following script still captures 90% or more of my build dependencies:

https://github.com/219-design/qt-qml-project-template-with-ci/blob/a85e7f49a12/tools/ci/provision.sh

In other words, the apt-get install lines shown there are a half-decent starting point for your Docker.

Caveat: the i386 things are there for Android support. If you are not building for Android (or anything else with i386 architecture), then you can delete those.