Qt for X11 Requirements

Platform Plugin Dependencies

On Linux, the xcb QPA (Qt Platform Abstraction) platform plugin is used. It provides the basic functionality needed by Qt GUI and Qt Widgets to run against X11. Its library dependencies are described the following table. To build Qt from its source code, you will also need to install the development packages for these libraries for your system.

It's possible to configure Qt with -qt-xcb, which compiles in a set of xcb helper libraries instead of trying to link against the system versions. This can help make Qt less dependent on some of the xcb helper libraries that might not be available on all distributions. The table specifies which dependencies are provided by -qt-xcb.

Name	Library	Notes	Configuration options	Minimum working version
XRender	libXrender	X Rendering Extension; used for anti-aliasing and alpha cursor support	-xrender or auto-detected	0.9.0
xcb-render	libxcb-render	X C Bindings for Render extension	auto-detected or provided by -qt-xcb	1.8.1
xcb-render-util	libxcb-render-util	Utility library for XCB for Render extension	auto-detected or provided by -qt-xcb	0.3.8
xcb-shape	libxcb-shape	X C Bindings for Shape extension	auto-detected or provided by -qt-xcb	1.8.1
xcb-randr	libxcb-randr	X C Bindings for Resize and Rotate Extension	auto-detected or provided by -qt-xcb	1.8.1
xcb-xfixes	libxcb-xfixes	X C Bindings for Fixes Extension	auto-detected or provided by -qt-xcb	1.8.1
xcb-sync	libxcb-sync	X C Bindings for Sync Extension	auto-detected or provided by -qt-xcb	1.8.1
xcb-shm	libxcb-shm	X C Bindings for Shared Memory Extension	auto-detected or provided by -qt-xcb	1.8.1
xcb-icccm	libxcb-icccm	X C Bindings for ICCCM Protocol	auto-detected or provided by -qt-xcb	0.3.9
xcb-keysyms	libxcb-keysyms	Utility library for XCB for keycode conversion	auto-detected or provided by -qt-xcb	0.3.9
xcb-image	libxcb-image	Utility library for XCB for XImage and XShmImage, used for QBackingStore and cursor support	auto-detected or provided by -qt-xcb	0.3.9
Fontconfig	libfontconfig	Font customization and configuration	-fontconfig or auto-detected	2.6
FreeType	libfreetype	Font engine		2.3.0
Xi	libXi	X11 Input Extensions	-xinput or auto-detected	1.3.0
Xext	libXext	X Extensions		6.4.3
X11	libX11	X11 client-side library		6.2.1
xcb	libxcb	X C Binding library		1.8.1
X11-xcb	libX11-xcb	Xlib/XCB interface library		1.3.2
SM	libSM	X Session Management	-sm or auto-detected	6.0.4
ICE	libICE	Inter-Client Exchange	-sm or auto-detected	6.3.5
glib	libglib-2.0	Common event loop handling	-glib or auto-detected	2.8.3
pthread	libpthread	Multithreading		2.3.5

Development packages for these libraries contain header files that are used when building Qt from its source code. On Debian-based GNU/Linux systems, for example, we recommend that you install the following development packages:

• libfontconfig1-dev
• libfreetype6-dev
• libx11-dev
• libxext-dev
• libxfixes-dev
• libxi-dev
• libxrender-dev
• libxcb1-dev
• libx11-xcb-dev
• libxcb-glx0-dev
• libxkbcommon-x11-dev

Additionally, if you do not configure with -qt-xcb, you should also install these development packages:

• libxcb-keysyms1-dev
• libxcb-image0-dev
• libxcb-shm0-dev
• libxcb-icccm4-dev
• libxcb-sync0-dev
• libxcb-xfixes0-dev
• libxcb-shape0-dev
• libxcb-randr0-dev
• libxcb-render-util0-dev

Some of these packages depend on others in this list, so installing one may cause others to be automatically installed. Other distributions may provide system packages with similar names.

OpenGL Dependencies

Configure attempts to automatically detect OpenGL ES 2.0, or later, or regular desktop OpenGL. You can disable OpenGL support by using the -no-opengl option.

Note: The Qt OpenGL module (which contains classes that start with QGL) has been deprecated in favor of the Qt GUI module (which contains classes that start with QOpenGL).

Multimedia Dependencies

As described in the Multimedia overview, Qt Multimedia uses the GStreamer multimedia framework as the backend for audio and video playback on Linux. The minimum required version of GStreamer is 0.10.24. The 1.x series is also supported.

To build Qt Multimedia, you need the GStreamer library, base plugins, and development files for your system. To run applications that use Qt Multimedia, you might also need to install the following GStreamer plugins: 'good', 'ugly', 'bad', ffmpeg (0.10), and libav (1.x). These additional plugins contain various codecs for audio and video decoding, as well as the necessary components for using the camera APIs. The package names for GStreamer vary between Linux distributions; try searching for gstreamer or libgstreamer in your distribution's package repository to find suitable packages.

Qt WebEngine Dependencies

Qt WebEngine has additional build requirements which are listed in the Qt WebEngine Platform Notes.

QDoc Dependencies

Since version 5.11, QDoc uses Clang to parse C++ code. If you wish to build QDoc manually, refer to Installing Clang for QDoc for specific build requirements.