<![CDATA[Questions about building Qt 6 from source, problems retrieving the source code]]>Hello everyone, I hope you're doing good. :)

I've never had any particular trouble (and gotten used) to build Qt 5 for desktop from it's source code.
However, I find some inconsistencies in the documentation on how to build Qt 6 (community edition, for GNU/Linux)...

I'm following mainly the instructions from this article:

git clone git://code.qt.io/qt/qt5.git qt6 then ./init-repository.

But, the cloning of the submodules always fails with this error:

From git://code.qt.io/qt/qt5compat
   a284da2..184ab31  dev        -> origin/dev
+ git config commit.template /home/rubisetcie/apps/qt6/.commit-template
+ git config remote.gerrit.url ssh://codereview.qt-project.org/qt/qt5compat.git
+ git config remote.gerrit.fetch +refs/heads/*:refs/remotes/gerrit/* /heads/
+ git submodule update --force --no-fetch
fatal: reference is not a tree: 440bf7fc60b7176b5a8d1de0a3a0ea7c1ae9bf87
fatal: Unable to checkout '440bf7fc60b7176b5a8d1de0a3a0ea7c1ae9bf87' in submodule path 'qt3d'

Next, I tried using ./configure --init-submodules, and it still failed, although sooner and with a different error...

Am I doing something wrong here? What is the accurate workflow to build the full Qt 6 framework from sources? Maybe the documentation is not up-to-date?

And while we're at it, what is the preferred method for the configuration, CMake directly, or via the configure script?

Thank you very much in advance. :p

]]>https://forum.qt.io/topic/163325/questions-about-building-qt-6-from-source-problems-retrieving-the-source-codeRSS for NodeThu, 05 Nov 2026 10:47:20 GMTTue, 23 Sep 2025 17:01:26 GMT60<![CDATA[Reply to Questions about building Qt 6 from source, problems retrieving the source code on Wed, 24 Sep 2025 17:04:18 GMT]]>The following works fine here:

git clone git://code.qt.io/qt/qt5.git qt6 
cd qt6
git checkout v6.9.2
./init-repository

What are you doing differently? Which platform are you on?
Neither init-repository, nor configure are deprecated.

]]>https://forum.qt.io/post/831968https://forum.qt.io/post/831968Wed, 24 Sep 2025 17:04:18 GMT<![CDATA[Reply to Questions about building Qt 6 from source, problems retrieving the source code on Wed, 24 Sep 2025 20:40:38 GMT]]>@jobor I see, this is really weird then... :|

I'm on Debian 13, but I'm kinda relieved that neither init-repository and configure are deprecated. :)

Actually I'm doing a shallow Git clone (git clone --depth 1 --branch v6.9.2 git://code.qt.io/qt/qt5.git qt6)... do you think it could be related to my problem?

]]>https://forum.qt.io/post/831986https://forum.qt.io/post/831986Wed, 24 Sep 2025 20:40:38 GMT<![CDATA[Reply to Questions about building Qt 6 from source, problems retrieving the source code on Wed, 24 Sep 2025 17:04:18 GMT]]>The following works fine here:

git clone git://code.qt.io/qt/qt5.git qt6 
cd qt6
git checkout v6.9.2
./init-repository

What are you doing differently? Which platform are you on?
Neither init-repository, nor configure are deprecated.

]]>https://forum.qt.io/post/831968https://forum.qt.io/post/831968Wed, 24 Sep 2025 17:04:18 GMT<![CDATA[Reply to Questions about building Qt 6 from source, problems retrieving the source code on Wed, 24 Sep 2025 07:07:09 GMT]]>@Christian-Ehrlicher Well I'll maybe do that then, thanks. Sad that there's no other way around.

And about the configuration? Do you use the configure script, or do you call CMake directly?

]]>https://forum.qt.io/post/831951https://forum.qt.io/post/831951Wed, 24 Sep 2025 07:07:09 GMT<![CDATA[Reply to Questions about building Qt 6 from source, problems retrieving the source code on Wed, 24 Sep 2025 04:15:04 GMT]]>@rubisetcie said in Questions about building Qt 6 from source, problems retrieving the source code:

How do you usually initialize the submodules?

Manually with git submodule init

]]>https://forum.qt.io/post/831946https://forum.qt.io/post/831946Wed, 24 Sep 2025 04:15:04 GMT<![CDATA[Reply to Questions about building Qt 6 from source, problems retrieving the source code on Tue, 23 Sep 2025 19:04:10 GMT]]>Thanks. I just tried that, subsequently disabling qt3d, qt5compat, qtactiveqt (because they all failed) but then I get the same error for qtbase...

Maybe instead, it's the whole init-repository script that is deprecated? How do you usually initialize the submodules?

]]>https://forum.qt.io/post/831931https://forum.qt.io/post/831931Tue, 23 Sep 2025 19:04:10 GMT<![CDATA[Reply to Questions about building Qt 6 from source, problems retrieving the source code on Tue, 23 Sep 2025 18:32:08 GMT]]>You can skip Qt3d - it's deprecated and maybe the link was not updated correctly due to this.

]]>https://forum.qt.io/post/831928https://forum.qt.io/post/831928Tue, 23 Sep 2025 18:32:08 GMT<![CDATA[Reply to Questions about building Qt 6 from source, problems retrieving the source code on Tue, 23 Sep 2025 17:44:40 GMT]]>@Christian-Ehrlicher No, I switched a specific release tag as specified, because I wish to build from a stable version (v6.9.2) instead.

]]>https://forum.qt.io/post/831927https://forum.qt.io/post/831927Tue, 23 Sep 2025 17:44:40 GMT<![CDATA[Reply to Questions about building Qt 6 from source, problems retrieving the source code on Tue, 23 Sep 2025 17:08:46 GMT]]>Did you check out the dev branch as written in the mentioned link?

]]>https://forum.qt.io/post/831926https://forum.qt.io/post/831926Tue, 23 Sep 2025 17:08:46 GMT