Getting Started | Qt Installer Framework Manual

- Qt Installer Framework Manual
- Getting Started

Overview of Qt Installer Framework ◦ End User Workflows

# Getting Started

You can use the Qt Installer Framework to create installation programs for all kinds of applications, including (but not limited to) applications built with Qt.

## Supported Platforms

You can use the Qt Installer Framework to create installers for all platforms supported by desktop Qt.

If you use Linux, install also Platform Plugin dependencies.

## Building from Sources

The following steps describe how to build the Qt Installer Framework yourself. You can skip this if you have downloaded a pre-built version of the framework.

### Supported Compilers

You can compile the Qt Installer Framework with Microsoft Visual Studio 2019 and newer, GCC 9 and newer, and Clang 13.0.0 and newer. Currently, the tested combination for Windows is Qt 6.6.0 with MSVC 2019 (Windows 10).

### Configuring Qt

If you use a statically built Qt to build the Qt Installer Framework you do not have to deliver Qt libraries, which enables you to distribute installers as one file. For more information about statically linking against OpenSSL libraries, see SSL Import and Export Restrictions.

The supported Qt version is 6.6.0.

Get Qt sources:

     \l{https://wiki.qt.io/Building_Qt_6_from_Git}{Get Qt sources from git}.
     Call init-repository with --module-subset=qt5compat, qtbase, qtdeclarative, qttools, qttranslations

#### Configuring Qt for Windows

Use the following configuration options for Windows:

     configure -prefix %CD%\qtbase -release -static -static-runtime -accessibility -no-icu -no-sql-sqlite -no-qml-debug -nomake examples -nomake tests

#### Configuring Qt for Linux

Use the following configuration options for Linux:

     configure -prefix $PWD/qtbase -release -static -accessibility -qt-zlib -qt-libpng -qt-libjpeg -qt-pcre -no-glib -no-cups -no-sql-sqlite -no-feature-gssapi -no-qml-debug -no-opengl -no-egl -no-xinput2 -no-sm -no-icu -nomake examples -nomake tests -no-libudev -bundled-xcb-xinput -qt-harfbuzz -qt-doubleconversion

#### Configuring Qt for macOS

Use the following configuration options for macOS:

     configure -prefix $PWD/qtbase -release -static -accessibility -qt-zlib -qt-libpng -no-cups -no-sql-sqlite -no-qml-debug -nomake examples -nomake tests -no-freetype

Build Qt:

     cmake --build . --parallel
     cmake --install .

### Third Party Dependencies

The Qt Installer Framework sources contain a redistribution of parts of the `libarchive` compression and archive library, which requires you to link against the following libraries; `liblzma`, `zlib`, `libbzip2`, and on macOS, `libiconv`.

To enable the use of `libarchive`, add the `libarchive` configuration feature to the list of values specified by the `CONFIG` variable. Installers created with this configuration support the creating and extracting of 7zip, zip, and tar archive files, with `gzip`, bzip2, and `xz` as available compression methods.

     qmake CONFIG+=libarchive

You can use the `IFW_ZLIB_LIBRARY`, `IFW_BZIP2_LIBRARY`, `IFW_LZMA_LIBRARY`, and `IFW_ICONV_LIBRARY` variables to specify the exact library files.

If you add the `-qt-zlib` configuration to the Qt version used to build the Qt Installer Framework, and `IFW_ZLIB_LIBRARY` variable is empty, `libarchive` will try to use the `zlib` library compiled into the QtCore module, which removes the need for an external library.

If you do not enable `libarchive` support, the builtin LZMA SDK library will act as a fallback and installation of the extra dependencies will not occur, but created installers will only support the 7zip format.

Note: Building IFW with LZMA SDK is deprecated and may not be available in future versions.

#### Installing Dependencies for Windows

You can download the source archives for the dependencies from:

- https://tukaani.org/xz/
- https://zlib.net/
- https://www.sourceware.org/bzip2/

When building the third party libraries with MSVC, make sure to use the same version that you used to build Qt, and that the compiler option used to select the run-time library matches the configuration options for Qt (debug/release, static/dynamic runtime).

#### Installing Dependencies for Linux

The required third party compression libraries are likely available from your distribution's package manager repositories.

For example, on Ubuntu 18.04 you can invoke the following to install the development packages containing headers for the libraries:

     sudo apt install zlib1g-dev liblzma-dev libbz2-dev

#### Installing Dependencies for macOS

The easiest way to install the missing libraries is with a third party package manager solution, like Homebrew or MacPorts. On macOS 10.15 you should only need to additionally install the `liblzma` library.

On Homebrew this would be:

     brew install xz

#### Troubleshooting

For `libarchive` related compilation errors, you may need to edit the definitions in a configuration header file respective to your platform. You can find this file in the `src/libs/3rdparty/libarchive/config/` directory of the Installer Framework sources.

### Setting up Qt Installer Framework

1. Clone the Qt Installer Framework source code from http://code.qt.io/cgit/installer-framework/installer-framework.git/ to get the sources for the tools.
2. Build the tools by running the "qmake" from the static Qt, followed by "make" or "nmake".

Note: To contribute patches to Qt Installer Framework, follow the standard Qt processes and guidelines. For more information, see Contribute to Qt.

Overview of Qt Installer Framework ◦ End User Workflows