Using qgtk2 plugin with Qt 5.9?

Elsworth55

Is it possible to use the qgtk2 plugin from Qt 5.6.2 with newer versions of Qt, such as Qt 5.9.1? If so how can this be achieved?

Just to give some background on why I ask this; in Qt 5.8.0 the qgtk2 plugin, which emulates the system GTK2 theme on Linux, was replaced by a new qgtk3 plugin, which is supposed to emulate the system's GTK3 theme. Unfortunately the new plugin is not very robust and fails to correctly emulate the system GTK3 theme on many desktop environments, and particularly on Cinnamon. I've continued to use Qt 5.6.2 on Linux, since that was the last version that came with the qgtk2 plugin, and was therefore the last version that worked correctly on Linux. However, Qt 5.6.2 is getting quite old and issues are starting to arise, for example it no longer compiles correctly on the latest release of Arch Linux because Qt 5.6.2 requires openssl 1.0 and Arch now ships with openssl 1.1, which causes compilation errors. I'd therefore like to switch to Qt 5.9.1 on Linux, but continue to use the qgtk2 plugin from 5.6.2 so that the system GTK is correctly emulated.

SGaist

Hi,

What you can try is to copy the gtk2 plugin over to your 5.9.1 and modify the platformthemes.pro file to make it build the plugin.

Hope it helps

Elsworth55

I tried deleting the Qt5.9.0/qtbase/src/plugins/platformthemes/gtk3 folder and replacing it with the qgtk2 folder from Qt 5.6.2. I then modified the 5.9.0 platformthemes.pro to change gtk3 to gtk2:

TEMPLATE = subdirs
QT_FOR_CONFIG += widgets-private

qtHaveModule(widgets):qtConfig(gtk2): SUBDIRS += gtk2

After configuration it generated this makefile, but it failed to build:

Makefile:670: recipe for target 'sub-plugins-make_first' failed
make[2]: *** [sub-plugins-make_first] Error 2
make[2]: Leaving directory '/home/user/Qt/Qt5.9.0-S64/qtbase/src'
Makefile:49: recipe for target 'sub-src-make_first' failed
make[1]: *** [sub-src-make_first] Error 2
make[1]: Leaving directory '/home/user/Qt/Qt5.9.0-S64/qtbase'
Makefile:83: recipe for target 'module-qtbase-make_first' failed
make: *** [module-qtbase-make_first] Error 2

I also tried using the platformthemes.pro from Qt 5.6.2:

TEMPLATE = subdirs

contains(QT_CONFIG, gtk2): SUBDIRS += gtk2

While Qt did compile with that, the qgtk2 plugin wasn't actually built. I'm not sure how to get it working.

SGaist

No need to delete anything.

You contains line won't work, there's no detection done for GTK2 anymore. Since you want to build it anyway, just keep the SUBDIRS part.

Elsworth55

I changed the platformthemes.pro to the below:

TEMPLATE = subdirs

SUBDIRS += gtk2

However, it fails to build with the same errors as before:

Makefile:670: recipe for target 'sub-plugins-make_first' failed
make[2]: *** [sub-plugins-make_first] Error 2
make[2]: Leaving directory '/home/user/Qt/Qt5.9.0-S64/qtbase/src'
Makefile:49: recipe for target 'sub-src-make_first' failed
make[1]: *** [sub-src-make_first] Error 2
make[1]: Leaving directory '/home/user/Qt/Qt5.9.0-S64/qtbase'
Makefile:83: recipe for target 'module-qtbase-make_first' failed
make: *** [module-qtbase-make_first] Error 2

I think the problem is actually in the qgtk2.pro file and is probably the below two lines. I assume QT_CFLAGS_QGTK2 and QT_LIBS_QGTK2 are no longer defined in Qt 5.9.0:

QMAKE_CXXFLAGS += $$QT_CFLAGS_QGTK2
LIBS += $$QT_LIBS_QGTK2

I might have to give up on using qgtk2 with Qt 5.9.0.

I'm thinking of reporting the qtk3 issues as a bug. I've been testing it with a variety of distributions and desktop environments and it does seem to have a lot of problems, and produces a number of different errors. I might write up a bug report with the errors and some screenshots of it failing to emulate the system GTK3 theme.

SGaist

Take a look at the content of the equivalent GTK3 flags and adapt them for GTK2.

Or just configure an older version of Qt with the GTK2 plugin and copy the values you can find.