aqtinstall 1.1.5

Another unofficial Qt installer

• Release:
• Documents:
• Test status:

This is a utility alternative to the official graphical Qt installer, for using in CI environment where an interactive UI is not usable such as Github Actions, Travis-CI, CircleCI, Azure-Pipelines, AppVeyor and others.

It can automatically download prebuilt Qt binaries for any target (you’re not bound to Linux binaries on Linux; you could also download iOS binaries). It’s working with Python > 3.5 on Linux, OS X and Windows.

When installing QtBase package on proper platforms (eg. install linux package on linux), aqt update Qt binaries(eg. qmake, and libQt5Core.so/Qt5Core.dll/Freamework.QtCore), and change configurations(qt.conf, and qconfig.pri) to make it working well with installed directory(Qt prefix).

License and copyright

This program is distributed under MIT license.

Qt SDK and its related files are under its licenses. When using aqtinstall, you are considered to agree upon Qt licenses. aqtinstall installs Qt SDK as of a (L)GPL Free Software.

For details see Qt licensing and Licenses used in Qt5

Requirements

• Minimum Python version: 3.6
• Recommended Python version: 3.7.5 or later
• Dependent libraries: requests, py7zr

Install

Same as usual, it can be installed with pip

$ pip install -U pip
$ pip install aqtinstall

You are recommended to update pip before installing aqtinstall. aqtinstall depends several packages, that is required to extract 7zip archives, some of which are precompiled in several platforms. Older pip does not handle it expectedly.(see #230)

Usage

General usage looks like this:

aqt [-h][--help][-O | --outputdir <directory>][-b | --base <mirror url>][-E | --external <7zip command>] \
    install <qt-version> <host> <target> [<arch>] [-m all | -m [extra module] [extra module]...] [--internal]
    [--archives <archive>[ <archive>...]] [--timeout <timeout(sec)>]

You can also call with python -m aqt syntax as well as command script aqt.

• The Qt version is formatted like this: 5.11.3
• Host is one of: linux, mac, windows
• Target is one of: desktop, android, ios (iOS only works with mac host)

• For some platforms you also need to specify an arch:

  • For windows, choose one of:

    • win64_msvc2019_64, win32_msvc2019,
    • win64_msvc2017_64, win32_msvc2017,
    • win64_msvc2015_64, win32_msvc2015,
    • win64_mingw81, win32_mingw81,
    • win64_mingw73, win32_mingw73,
    • win64_mingw53, win32_mingw53,
    • win64_msvc2019_winrt_x64, win64_msvc2019_winrt_x86, win64_msvc2019_winrt_armv7
    • win64_msvc2017_winrt_x64, win64_msvc2017_winrt_x86, win64_msvc2017_winrt_armv7

  • For android and Qt 6 or Qt 5.13 and below, choose one of: android_x86_64, android_arm64_v8a, android_x86, android_armv7

• You can specify external 7zip command path instead of built-in extractor.
• When specifying all for extra modules option -m all extra modules are installed.

Installing tool and utility (Experimental)

You can install tools and utilities using following syntax;

python -m aqt [-h][--help][-O | --outputdir <directory>][-b | --base <mirror url>][-E | --external <7zip command>] \
    tool <host> <tool_name> <tool-version> <arch> [--timeout <timeout>]

• tool_name is one of tools_ifw, tools_vcredist, and tools_openssl.
• arch is full qualified tool name such as qt.tools.ifw.31 which values can be seen on Qt archive_site This is a quite experimental feature, may not work and please use it with your understanding of what you are doing.
• It does not recognize ‘installscript.qs’. When using tools which depends on a qt script, you should do something by yourself.

Target directory

aqt can take option ‘–outputdir’ or ‘-O’ that specify a target directory.

The Qt packages are installed under current directory as such Qt/<ver>/gcc_64/ If you want to install it in C:Qt as same as standard gui installer default, run such as follows:

C:\> mkdir Qt
C:\> aqt install --outputdir c:\Qt 5.11.3 windows desktop win64_msvc2019_64

Command examples

Example: Installing Qt SDK 5.12.0 for Linux with QtCharts and QtNetworkAuth:

pip install aqtinstall
aqt install --outputdir /opt/Qt 5.12.0 linux desktop -m qtcharts qtnetworkauth

Example: Installing Android (armv7) Qt 5.10.2:

aqt install 5.10.2 linux android android_armv7

Example: Installing Android Qt 5.15.2:

aqt install 5.15.2 linux android android

Example: Install examples, doc and source:

C:\ aqt examples 5.15.0 windows desktop -m qtcharts qtnetworkauth
C:\ aqt doc 5.15.0 windows desktop -m qtcharts qtnetworkauth
C:\ aqt src 5.15.0 windows desktop

Example: Install Web Assembly for Qt5

aqt install 5.15.0 linux desktop wasm_32

Example: Install an Install FrameWork (IFW):

aqt tool linux tools_ifw 4.0 qt.tools.ifw.40

Example: Install vcredist:

C:\ aqt tool windows tools_vcredist 2019-02-13-1 qt.tools.vcredist_msvc2019_x64
C:\ .\Qt\Tools\vcredist\vcredist_msvc2019_x64.exe /norestart /q

Example: Install MinGW on Windows

C:\ aqt tool -O c:\Qt windows tools_mingw 8.1.0-1-202004170606 qt.tools.win64_mingw810w
c:\ set PATH=C:\Qt\Tools\mingw810_64\bin

Example: Install Qt6 for android

aqt install -O qt 6.1.0 linux desktop
aqt install -O qt 6.1.0 linux android android_armv7
qt/6.1.0/android_armv7/bin/qmake -query

Example: Show help message

aqt help

Environment Variables

It is users task to set some environment variables to fit your platform such as

export PATH=/path/to/qt/x.x.x/clang_64/bin/:$PATH
export QT_PLUGIN_PATH=/path/to/qt/x.x.x/clang_64/plugins/
export QML_IMPORT_PATH=/path/to/qt/x.x.x/clang_64/qml/
export QML2_IMPORT_PATH=/path/to/qt/x.x.x/clang_64/qml/

aqtinstall never do it for you because not to break multiple installation versions.

Supported CI platforms

There are no limitation for CI platform but currently it is tested on Azure Pipelines and Github actions. If you want to use it with Github actions, install_qt action will help you. If you want to use it with Azure Pipelines, blog article Using Azure DevOps Pipelines with Qt may be informative.

(Advanced) Force dependency

(Here is a note for advanced user who knows python/pip well.)

When you have a trouble on your (minor) platform to install aqtinstall’s dependency, you can force dependencies and its versions (not recommended for ordinary use). You can run pip to install individual dependencies in manual and install aqtinstall with –no-deps.

Example:

Avoid installation of py7zr, python 7zip library, and force using external 7z command to extract archives.

$ pip install -U pip
$ pip install requests==2.25.1 packaging texttable
$ pip install --no-deps aqtinstall
$ python -m aqt --external /usr/local/bin/7z install 5.15.2 linux desktop

Use cases

• GitHub Actions: install_qt
• Docker image: docker aqtinstall
• PyQt5 Tools: pyqt5-tools
• Yet another comic reader: YACReader utilize on Azure-Pipelines

Media, slide, articles and discussions

• Contributor Nelson’s blog article: Fast and lightweight headless Qt Installer from Qt Mirrors - aqtinstall
• Lostdomain.org blog: Using Azure DevOps Pipelines with Qt
• Wincak’s Weblog: Using Azure CI for cross-platform Linux and Windows Qt application builds
• Qt Forum: Automatic installation for Travis CI (or any other CI)
• Qt Form: Qt silent, unattended install
• Qt Study group presentation: Another Qt CLI installer

History

This program is originally shown in Kaidan project as a name qli-installer. A project aqtinstall extend the original to run with standard python features with Linux, Mac and Windows, to be tested on CI platform, and to improve performance with a concurrent downloading.