I went down this road because I wanted to compile one simple test program so I could file a bug with GnuEmacs about how they don’t catch NumLock. This is a really old bug and they seem willing to let it rot until computers cease to exist. My test program was a KeyEvent example I stole from online then added support for NumLock. It took longer to scrape from the Internet than it did to test under Linux.
keypress.h
/*
* stolen from http://programmingexamples.wikidot.com/qt-events
* and modified for Qt 5.14
*/
#ifndef KEYPRESS_H
#define KEYPRESS_H
#include
class QLabel;
class QVBoxLayout;
class KeyPress : public QWidget
{
Q_OBJECT
public:
KeyPress(QWidget *parent = 0);
protected:
void keyPressEvent(QKeyEvent *);
void keyReleaseEvent(QKeyEvent *);
private:
QLabel *myLabel;
QVBoxLayout *mainLayout;
};
#endif // KEYPRESS_H
keypress.cpp
/*
* stolen from http://programmingexamples.wikidot.com/qt-events
* and modified for Qt 5.14
*/
#include "keypress.h"
#include
#include
#include
KeyPress::KeyPress(QWidget *parent) :
QWidget(parent)
{
myLabel = new QLabel("LABEL");
mainLayout = new QVBoxLayout;
mainLayout->addWidget(myLabel);
setLayout(mainLayout);
}
void KeyPress::keyPressEvent(QKeyEvent *event)
{
if(event->key() == Qt::Key_Escape)
{
myLabel->setText("You pressed ESC");
}
if (event->key() == Qt::Key_NumLock)
{
myLabel->setText("NumLock was pressed!!!");
}
}
void KeyPress::keyReleaseEvent(QKeyEvent *event)
{
if(event->key() == Qt::Key_Escape)
{
myLabel->setText("You released ESC");
}
if (event->key() == Qt::Key_NumLock)
{
myLabel->setText("NumLock was released***");
}
}
main.cpp
/*
* stolen from http://programmingexamples.wikidot.com/qt-events
* and modified for Qt 5.14
*/
#include
#include "keypress.h"
#include
int main(int argc, char *argv[])
{
QApplication a(argc, argv);
KeyPress *keyPress = new KeyPress();
keyPress->show();
return a.exec();
}
It puts up a tiny little window. When you press the [Esc] key it displays a message. Another message when you release the key. I added a pair of messages for NumLock. The reason I went through all of this pain is I wanted to prove to these people that Qt can do it under Msys2/Windows and Linux so why can’t you just look at the code in Qt to see how they are intercepting key events. Since Qt is OpenSource, the code is there for all to see.
I had hoped there was a pre-compiled Qt development package in the Msys2 environment. After installing C/C++ compilers and a few other bits, my hopes were dashed. Adding insult to injury Qt currently only has a mkspec for 32-bit mingw.
Note: I don’t install the virus known as Windows on a bare machine as the primary OS. If I have to do anything with Windows I install it in a VM. Nobody should let that be a primary computer operating system. At least not on a computer they care about.
Open a terminal in Msys2 and type the following:
pacman -S base-devel git mercurial cvs wget p7zip pacman -S perl ruby python2 mingw-w64-i686-toolchain mingw-w64-x86_64-toolchain pacman -S clang pacman -S mingw32/mingw-w64-i686-clang pacman -S mingw64/mingw-w64-x86_64-clang pacman -S mingw32/mingw-w64-i686-clang-analyzer pacman -S mingw64/mingw-w64-x86_64-clang-analyzer pacman -S mingw32/mingw-w64-i686-clang-tools-extra pacman -S mingw64/mingw-w64-x86_64-clang-tools-extra pacman -S mingw32/mingw-w64-i686-compiler-rt pacman -S mingw64/mingw-w64-x86_64-compiler-rt pacman -S mingw32/mingw-w64-i686-libblocksruntime pacman -S mingw64/mingw-w64-x86_64-libblocksruntime
(The clang stuff is mostly to get the llvm stuff Qt is looking for.) Exit out of that terminal and open a new terminal and type
pacman -Syu
You will need to crash out of the terminal rather than typing exit once this is complete. Open a new terminal and type
pacman -Su
to complete installation. Depending on the quality of your Internet connection and the time of day, this could run a long time. You may want to add
--disable-download-timeout
to your pacman command. It will take even longer because it won’t be skipping the slow/sucky mirrors, but it should not fail to download. The timeout feature of pacman seems to have been written by Twitter users. It fails with a message about no bytes within 10 seconds, but only takes 2-3 seconds to do that.
If something happens and pacman crashes (happened to me once) don’t panic. There is probably a dump file, but you don’t care about that. Wait a few seconds and retry the command. If you see something like this
rolan@DESKTOP-HTIGNPK MSYS ~ $ pacman -S mingw-w64-i686-qt5 error: failed to init transaction (unable to lock database) error: could not lock database: File exists if you're sure a package manager is not already running, you can remove /var/lib/pacman/db.lck
Do this
rolan@DESKTOP-HTIGNPK MSYS ~ $ rm /var/lib/pacman/db.lck rm: remove write-protected regular empty file '/var/lib/pacman/db.lck'? y
Theoretically you are now ready to configure Qt. I unzipped Qt in a shared directory so I had to cd here:
Paste this in at the prompt.
windows2unix() { local pathPcs=() split pathTmp IFS=\;; read -ra split <<< "$*"; for pathTmp in "${split[@],}"; do pathPcs+=( "/${pathTmp//+([:\\])//}" ); done; echo "${pathPcs[*]}"; }; systemrootP=$(windows2unix "$SYSTEMROOT"); export PATH="$PWD/qtbase/bin:$PWD/gnuwin32/bin:/c/msys64/mingw64/bin:/c/msys64/usr/bin:$PATH"
You need more of the path than you typically get. That takes care of it.
./configure -opensource -confirm-license -release -skip qtwebengine -skip qtvirtualkeyboard -skip qtlocation -opengl desktop -qt-sqlite -qt-zlib -qt-libjpeg -qt-libpng -qt-freetype -qt-pcre -qt-harfbuzz -nomake examples -nomake tests -prefix /usr/local/bin/qt-5-14-1 -platform win32-g++ -silent
Keep in mind I’m working with 5.14.1. You may want a different install directory. Neither qtvirtualkeyboard nor qtlocation will compile on msys2 so you definitely need to skip them. You might want to skip the 3d too if you have no plans on using it. In a VM assigned 2 CPUs and 8 Gig of RAM it took something like 6 hours to compile.
If configure spits up about some missing dependency, don’t panic. Simply find the dependency and install it. Remember, you need the 32-bit version for this build of Qt, but you might as well install both the 32 & 64-bit versions if you have the disk space.
Before running configure again you should delete these files.
$ rm config.summary $ rm .qmake.cache $ rm .qmake.stash $ rm config.cache $ rm config.log
A nice clean configure will end like this without any messages about missing things or errors.
Note: No wayland-egl support detected. Cross-toolkit compatibility disabled. Qt is now configured for building. Just run 'make'. Once everything is built, you must run 'make install'. Qt will be installed into 'C:\msys64\usr\local\bin\qt-5-14-1'. Prior to reconfiguration, make sure you remove any leftovers from the previous build.
Note: If your build fails and you decide to configure differently, you need to run “make clean” before you delete the files mentioned above.
mingw32-make -j 4
I only had 2 CPUs assigned to this VM but I still used 4. Please note that you need to use mingw32-make. Hours later, if your build seems to go fine
mingw32-make install
If all goes well, not a given since make install seems to build a bunch of stuff the actual make skipped, you can exit that terminal window. Don’t try to use it for anything else because you’ve jacked with the path.
Note that Msys2 automatically puts /usr/local/bin in the PATH. It’s just not polite though.
You have to edit your .bash_profile
Things get better after you close your terminal window and open another.
It runs really really slow launched from the command line like that. (Probably doesn’t help being in a 2 CPU VM!) Yes, I could probably fix my Windows environment to make things better, but that wasn’t the point of this exercise. There for everyone to see is the release message from NumLock having been pressed.
