Getting Started with Qt for Android (original) (raw)

Installing the Prerequisites

In order to use Qt for Android, you need the following:

Different Qt versions depend on different NDK versions, as listed below:

Qt version NDK version Toolchain
Qt 5.14.0 or later Qt 5.13.2 or later Qt 5.12.6 or later NDK r20b or r21 android-clang
Qt 5.12.0 to 5.12.5 Qt 5.13.0 to 5.13.1 NDK r19c android-clang
Qt 5.11 and earlier NDK r10e GCC toolchain

Note: Qt 5.14.0 and 5.14.1 with NDK r21 have a bug fixed at QTBUG-81461.

Note: Make sure to unpack the Android SDK and NDK to a writeable location that Qt Creator can access later. Otherwise, Qt Creator won't be able to use sdkmanager or find all components even if they were installed manually.

Installing the Android SDK Essentials

After downloading and unpacking the Commandline SDK Tools, use the sdkmanager command line tool to install the essential packages:

cd /tools/bin/ ./sdkmanager --sdk_root= --install "cmdline-tools;latest" ./sdkmanager --sdk_root= --install "platform-tools" "platforms;android-29" "build-tools;29.0.2" "ndk;21.3.6528147"

Android Studio or the Qt Creator's SDK Manager UI can also be used to install the essential SDK packages.

To use the Android Emulator, install it by entering:

./sdkmanager --sdk_root= --install "emulator" "patcher;v4"

Host Specific Configuration

Windows

The default USB driver on Windows does not allow debugging using Android Debug Bridge (ADB) tool. You must install the additional USB driver provided by the extras Android SDK package. To install it, run the following:

sdkmanager.bat --sdk_root= --install "extras;google;usb_driver"

After the package installation is complete, install the driver from <ANDROID_SDK_ROOT>/extras/google/usb_driver. Try running a few basic adb commands now and check whether your Android device responds to them.

Linux 64-bit

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 Android emulator, the following dependencies are also necessary:

sudo apt-get install libsdl1.2debian:i386

Qt Creator IDE

The Qt Creator IDE can be used to develop Qt applications for Android. For more information, see Qt Creator: Connecting Android Devices.

Testing Your Setup

Now you can test your development setup by running the examples shipped with the Qt installation. For more information, see Qt for Android Examples.

To develop a simple application from scratch, see Qt Creator: Creating a Mobile Application.