Testing the development version of QElectroTech

QElectroTech uses the OpenSource edition of the Qt 4.4 library.

Go to that page and download the file “qt-win-opensource-4.4.0-mingw.exe”. This file allows you to install a C++ compiler, the headers of the Qt 4.3 library (*.h) and the binaries (*.dll, *.a, utilities,…). The installation process is quite straightforward. Make sure that the environment variable PATH has the path to the following directories:

• the MinGW compiler: C:\MinGW\bin
• the Qt utilities: C:\Qt\4.4.0\bin

To change your environment variables, go to Start > System > Advanced (a tab) > Environment variables (a button). Edit the PATH variable for your user. Reboot if necessary.

If it works, open a prompt (Start > Launch > write 'cmd' and validate) and type: qmake -v. You should get this (or something similar):

QMake version 2.01a
Using Qt version 4.4.0 in C:\Qt\4.4.0\lib

Another test: type mingw32-make. You should see:

mingw32-make: *** No targets specified and no makefile found.  Stop.

At that stage, you have successfully installed the Qt library.

Qt 4.4 is available in Debian repositories:

apt-get install libqt4-core libqt4-dev libqt4-gui

If the package system of your system does not provide Qt 4.4, you should compile it yourself. Go to that page and download the file “qt-x11-opensource-src-4.4.0.tar.gz”. Piece of advice: Install the X libraries headers (already installed under some systems like Slackware and PC-BSD).

# Archive decompression
tar xzvf qt-x11-opensource-src-4.4.0.tar.gz
# Compilation configuration
cd qt-x11-opensource-src-4.4.0
./configure
# compilation
make
# installation: switch to root (su) for this last stage
make install

Edit also your environment variable PATH in order to include the Qt binaries directory (typically: /usr/local/Trolltech/Qt-4.4.0/bin):

export PATH="/usr/local/Trolltech/Qt-4.4.0/bin:${PATH}"

If you already know Subversion (or even CVS), you should be familiar with that:

# version 0.2 official
svn export svn://svn.tuxfamily.org/svnroot/qet/qet/tags/0.2 qelectrotech
# trunk (version 0.2 + some improvements)
svn export svn://svn.tuxfamily.org/svnroot/qet/qet/trunk qelectrotech
# branche 0.3 (experimentations version 0.3)
svn export svn://svn.tuxfamily.org/svnroot/qet/qet/branches/0.3 qelectrotech

Subversion is a version control system, i.e. a tool that allows you to keep track of all changes that have been done to the sources during the development of the project. These commands allow to extract different 'snapshots' of the development. We recommend you to use the trunk. Indeed, we try to keep the trunk as stable as possible, in contrast with the 0.3 branch. Moreover, the trunk brings some small improvements and bug fixes since the official 0.2 version.

If you plan to recompile QET on a regular basis, substitute co to export (for checkout). That will enable you to update your sources with svn up. You should however remove the directory .svn (or after, but in the installation direcory) before doing a 'make install', using e.g. the command:

find elements/ -name .svn -type d -print | xargs rm -rf

It is possible to easily extract the source of Subversion repository in the form of an archive with the tool WebSVN.

Load and decompress the desired archive:

• qelectrotech-0.2.tar.gz
• qelectrotech-trunk.tar.gz
• qelectrotech-0.3.tar.gz

Open a command prompt:

# go to the appropriate directory (there is a *.pro in the name), e.g.:
cd /d C:\dossier\autredossier\trunk
# generate the Makefile
qmake
# compile
mingw32-make
# set up the executable files
move /Y release\qelectrotech.exe .
copy "misc\Lancer QET.bat" .
# run QET
"Launch QET.bat"

The method is the same than the other Linux/UNIX. There is only one difference: the utility qmake is probably named qmake-qt4 (that can be very confusing, if you were wrong, do a 'rm Makefile' and check with 'qmake -v').

# go to the appropriate directory (ther is *.pro in the name)
cd qelectrotech
# generate le Makefile
qmake
# compile
make -f Makefile.Release
# installation
make -f Makefile.Release install
# execute QET
qelectrotech

After that you should be able to test QElectroTech. Do not hesitate to contact us for a bug, a suggestion, or what ever..