linuxdeployqt/BUILDING.md

Building from source

If you just would like to bundle your application for x86_64 platforms, it is normally not necessary that you build linuxdeployqt yourself. Instead, download linuxdeployqt-x86_64.AppImage from the Releases page and chmod a+x it. This bundle, by the way, has been generated using linuxdeployqt itself as part of our Travis CI continuous build pipeline.

So, if you are on another platform (e.g. i686, ARM) or would like to compile from source, here are the steps:

• Get and build linuxdeployqt e.g., using Qt 5.7.0 (you could use this Qt Creator AppImage for this)

sudo apt-get -y install git g++ libgl1-mesa-dev
git clone https://github.com/probonopd/linuxdeployqt.git
# Then build in Qt Creator, or use
export PATH=$(readlink -f /tmp/.mount_QtCreator-*-x86_64/*/gcc_64/bin/):$PATH
cd linuxdeployqt
qmake
make

• Optional if you want to install linuxdeployqt into your Qt installation, and make it a part of your Qt just like any other tool (qmake, etc.)

sudo make install

• Build and install patchelf (a small utility to modify the dynamic linker and RPATH of ELF executables; similar to install_name_tool on macOS). To learn more about this, see http://blog.qt.io/blog/2011/10/28/rpath-and-runpath/

wget https://nixos.org/releases/patchelf/patchelf-0.9/patchelf-0.9.tar.bz2
tar xf patchelf-0.9.tar.bz2
( cd patchelf-0.9/ && ./configure  && make && sudo make install )

• Optional if you want to generate AppImages: Download appimagetool and put it into your $PATH, e.g., into /usr/local/bin. Make sure it is renamed to appimagetool and is chmod a+x

sudo wget -c "https://github.com/AppImage/AppImageKit/releases/download/continuous/appimagetool-x86_64.AppImage" -O /usr/local/bin/appimagetool
sudo chmod a+x /usr/local/bin/appimagetool