Building qt-android on windows

Tested last time on branch 5.4 2015-01-22

Note, it is not currently possible to use Microsoft's compilers to build the Windows host tools for Qt Android.

Setting up a development environment

• Install the latest Perl:

http://strawberryperl.com/

Select Destination folder (we'll call this <PERL_ROOT>, and refer similarly to other install locations).

• Set up the MinGW toolchain.

One way to do this is to download a pre-built Qt package for MinGW, and then add it (e.g. C:\dev\Qt\Tools\mingw730_64\bin) to PATH. Another way is to install the latest MinGW-w64 from mingwbuilds:

http://sourceforge.net/projects/mingwbuilds/files/host-windows/releases/4.8.1/32-bit/threads-win32/dwarf/x32-4.8.1-release-win32-dwarf-rev1.7z/download

Extract to <MINGW_BUILDS_ROOT> and add <MINGW_BUILDS_ROOT>32\bin to the front of your PATH.

• Install the latest JDK 7:

http://www.oracle.com/technetwork/java/javase/downloads/index.html

Add <JDK_ROOT> to PATH.

• Install Android NDK:

https://developer.android.com/tools/sdk/ndk/index.html

Extract to <ANDROID_NDK_PATH> If you have ndk9 installed update it to latest version cause it doesn't work any more.

• Install the latest Android SDK (tools only):

http://developer.android.com/sdk/index.html

Run the Android SDK Manager and install the latest version of "SDK Platform", "Google APIs" and "build-tools" in <ANDROID_SDK_PATH>

• Open cmd.exe window and perform some checks:

Ensure "where gcc.exe" lists <MINGW_ROOT>.exe first (before <PERL_ROOT>.exe)
Ensure "where mingw32-make.exe" lists <MINGW_ROOT>32-make.exe first.
Ensure "where perl.exe" lists <PERL_ROOT>.exe first.
Ensure "where javac.exe" lists <JDK_ROOT>first.

• Add some environment variables:

set "ANDROID_API_VERSION=android-21"
set "ANDROID_SDK_ROOT=<ANDROID_SDK_PATH>"
set "ANDROID_TARGET_ARCH=armeabi-v7a"
set "ANDROID_BUILD_TOOLS_REVISION=21.1.2"
set "ANDROID_NDK_PATH=<ANDROID_NDK_PATH>"
set "ANDROID_TOOLCHAIN_VERSION=4.9"

And the path to NDK:

set "ANDROID_NDK_HOST=windows-x86_64"

or

set "ANDROID_NDK_HOST=windows"

.. depending on which NDK you downloaded.

Cloning

• Make the root folder for the Qt/Android build:

Make sure there are no spaces in this path and that it doesn't contain too many characters. I went for "C:"

mkdir C:cd C:

• Follow step 4 at http://wiki.qt.io/Qt5ForAndroidBuilding

Build steps

configure.bat -developer-build -platform win32-g++ -opengl es2 -xplatform android-g++ -android-ndk ANDROID_NDK_PATH -android-sdk ANDROID_SDK_ROOT -opensource -confirm-license -nomake tests -nomake examples
mingw32-make.exe -j<N>

..where <N> is the number of parallel jobs your system can optimally exploit. If you have trouble, remove the -j<N>, and try again.

• Follow steps 8..11 at http://wiki.qt.io/Qt5ForAndroidBuilding (replacing make with mingw32-make.exe)

Finally

You can also build Qt/Android from the MSYS shell- the one from mingw-builds that you already downloaded - following much the same procedure and using exactly the same software. This is currently left as an exercise for the reader.