Appendix A: Building Qbs
Qbs can be installed from binary packages or built from sources, as described in this appendix. In addition, this appendix describes how to use Docker images for developing Qbs.
Supported Platforms
Qbs can be installed and run on the following platforms:
- Windows 7, or later
- Linux (tested on Debian 8 and 9, Ubuntu 16.04, OpenSuSE 13.2, and Arch Linux)
- macOS 10.7, or later
System Requirements
To build Qbs from the source, you need:
- Qt 5.6.2, or later
- Windows: MinGW with GCC 4.9 or Microsoft Visual Studio 2015, or later
- Linux: GCC 4.9, or later, or Clang 3.9.0, or later
- macOS: Xcode 6.2, or later
An installed toolchain has to match the one that Qt was compiled with.
Building
To build Qbs, enter the following command:
qmake -r qbs.pro && make
Depending on your platform, you might use mingw32-make
, nmake
, or jom
instead of make
.
Installation by using make install
is usually not needed. It is however possible, by entering the following command.
make install INSTALL_ROOT=$INSTALL_DIRECTORY
Configure Options
Qbs recognizes the following qmake CONFIG options to customize the build:
Option | Notes |
---|---|
qbs_enable_unit_tests | Enable additional autotests. |
qbs_disable_rpath | Disable the use of rpath. This can be used when packaging Qbs for distributions which do not permit the use of rpath, such as Fedora. |
qbs_no_dev_install | Exclude header files from installation, that is, perform a non-developer build. |
qbs_no_man_install | Exclude the man page from installation. |
qbs_enable_project_file_updates | Enable API for updating project files. This implies a dependency to the Qt GUI module. |
Using Docker
A set of Docker images for developing Qbs (which are maintained by the Qbs team) is available on Docker Hub. Both Windows Server Core and Debian Linux container types are available.
Note: The source code for the Qbs development Docker images is located in the docker/
directory of the Qbs source tree, if you wish to build them yourself.
Linux Containers
The easiest way to get started is to build Qbs using a Linux container. These types of containers are supported out of the box on all the supported host platforms: Windows, macOS, and Linux. Run the following to download the Qbs development image based on Debian 9 Stretch:
docker pull qbsbuild/qbsdev:stretch
You can then create a new container with the Qbs source directory mounted from your host machine's file system, by running:
docker run -it -v $PWD:/qbs -w /qbs qbsbuild/qbsdev:stretch
Or with a slightly different syntax for Windows:
docker run -it -v %CD%:/qbs -w /qbs qbsbuild/qbsdev:stretch
You will now be in an interactive Linux shell where you can develop and build Qbs.
Windows Containers
To build Qbs for Windows using Windows containers, your host OS must be running Windows 10 Pro and have Hyper-V enabled. Switch your Docker environment to use Windows containers, then run the following command to download the Windows 10 Qbs development image:
docker pull qbsbuild/qbsdev:windowsservercore
You can then create a new container with the Qbs source directory mounted from your host machine's file system, by running:
docker run -it -v %CD%:C:\qbs -w C:\qbs qbsbuild/qbsdev:windowsservercore
If you want to use Windows containers on a macOS or Linux host, you will have to create a virtual machine running Windows 10 and register it with docker-machine
. There is at least one Open Source project that helps to facilitate this by using using Packer, Vagrant, and VirtualBox.
The docker run
command to spawn a Windows container on a Unix host will look slightly different (assuming windows
is the name of the Docker machine associated with the Windows container hosting VM):
eval $(docker-machine env windows) docker run -it -v C:$PWD:C:\\qbs -w C:\\qbs qbsbuild/qbsdev:windowsservercore
Building Release Packages
Release packages for Qbs for Windows can be built using the following command on Windows:
docker run --rm -v %CD%:C:\qbs -w C:\qbs qbsbuild/qbsdev:windowsservercore cmd /c scripts\make-release-archives
For building release packages for Windows on macOS or Linux:
eval $(docker-machine env windows) docker run --rm -v C:$PWD:C:\\qbs -w C:\\qbs qbsbuild/qbsdev:windowsservercore cmd /c scripts\\make-release-archives