Getting Started with Qt for Android
Requirements
In order to use Qt for Android, you need the following:
- The Android SDK Tools
- The Android NDK
- Java SE Development Kit (JDK) v6 or later. You can also use OpenJDK on Linux.
- On Windows, you need the following additional installations:
- Apache Ant v1.8 or later
- Android Debug Bridge (ADB) driver on the Windows platform to enable USB debugging. The default USB driver on Windows does not allow debugging. For details about how to get the USB driver, see http://developer.android.com/sdk/win-usb.html.
After installing the driver, try running a few basic adb commands and check whether your device responds to it.
After installing these tools, update the Android SDK to get the API and tools packages required for development. You can update the SDK using the android tool that comes with the SDK Tools package. For example, on Ubuntu the following command starts the Android SDK Manager, which enables you to select the packages you want to install:
./android update sdk
Note: If you're developing on a 64-bit Linux machine, you must install the following dependencies in order to run 32-bit executables like adb, which allows Qt Creator to find devices to deploy to:
sudo apt-get install libstdc++6:i386 libgcc1:i386 zlib1g:i386 libncurses5:i386
To run the emulator, the following dependencies are also necessary:
sudo apt-get install libsdl1.2debian:i386
Installing Qt for Android
The Qt 5 installers for different platforms are available from the Downloads page. Choose the one that is appropriate.
Once you have the installer, follow these steps:
- Run the installer to begin installing Qt 5 on your development platform.
- Select the components you need in the Select Components screen and click Next.
- After the installation is complete, the installer lets you open Qt Creator and the README. Select to open Qt Creator and click Finish.
- Select Tools > Options > Android in Qt Creator to add the Android NDK and SDK paths. For more details, see Qt Creator Manual.
Now you can test your development setup by running the examples that came with the Qt 5 package installed earlier. You can browse the examples in Qt Creator Welcome mode. Use the android filter in the search field to list all the examples tested on Android.
To develop a simple application from scratch, see Creating a Mobile Application.