How to develop with Qt under IGEP Technology

Overview

This guide can be helpful to learnt to develop Qt applications under IGEP Boards. Qt is a cross-platform application framework that is widely used for developing application software with a graphical user interface, and also used for developing non-GUI programs such as command-line tools and consoles for servers. You can get more information here.

Requirements

There are some requisites to follow this guide:

• IGEP SDK VM: follow the IGEP SDK SOFTWARE USER MANUAL (chapter 2.3 "Setting up and running the VM") or install Qt Creator
  
• IGEP Qt Demo: follow the IGEP SDK SOFTWARE USER MANUAL (chapter 6.1 "Create IGEP firmware bootable micro-sd card") and install qt4e-demo-image-igep00x0.tar.bz2 instead IGEP firmware.
• IGEP v2, IGEP BERLIN or IGEP PARIS
• MicroSD Card (at least 2Gbytes)

Download and install Qt demo image to a SD

Once you have open IGEP SDK VM, launch a terminal and type:

cd Desktop/
wget http://downloads.isee.biz/denzil/binary/qt4e-demo-image-igep00x0.tar.bz2

git clone https://git.isee.biz/igep-tools/igep-tools.git

cd igep-tools/script

Insert a SD-Card media and use the igep-media-create script to copy the firmware to SD-Card media, required options are:

• --mmc </dev/sdX>

       unformated MMC Card

• --image <filename>

       specify file used to create the bootable SD card.

• --machine <machine>

       specify the machine. Options are igep0020, igep0030 or igep0032

For example, assuming the SD card device takes "/dev/sdf" and you have and IGEPv2 board (igep0020), type:

./igep-media-create --mmc /dev/sdf --machine igep0020 --image /home/jdoe/Desktop/qt4e-demo-image-igep00x0.tar.bz2

This should give you a bootable SD-card

Prepare Qt demo image

Qt demo image is a root filesystem build by Yocto that contains Qt embedded libraries, also this image has some Qt examples for testing purposes.

This image doesn't have openssh and gdbserver, so we should install these packages to develop Qt applications. Open a shell prompt using serial communication (IGEP SDK SOFTWARE MANUAL chapter 3.1 "Using serial mode") and type the following commands:

zypper ref
zypper in openssh
zypper in gdbserver

Now you can connect between IGEP and VM using SSH protocol:

ssh root@"IGEP IP for example: 192.168.5.1"

Using Qt Creator

First Steps

Open Program:

Go to Applications -> IGEP development -> Qt Creator

^{Click to enlarge image}

Open an example:

Copy your desired example from (/opt/QtSDK/Examples/4.7 using VM or ~/QtSDK/Examples/4.7 default directory install) to your desktop.

^{Click to enlarge image}

NOTE: some examples (like hellogl) cannot be compiled to ARM, for this How-to is used calculator example.

Open this example with Qt Creator, set Desktop target and use for each Qt Version one debug and one release

^{Click to enlarge image}

ARM Platform

Build Programs

To compile to ARM for IGEP go to Project use the following configuration at Projects field -> Build:

^{Click to enlarge image}

NOTE: Use Debug build if you want to debug later

Compile with: Build->Clean All and Build->Build All (Ctrl+Shift+B).

Run Programs

Once you compiled the program pass it from VM to IGEP via SSH, launch a terminal and type:

scp "pathtobinary" root@"IGEP IP for example: 192.168.5.1":/home/root

Get a remote shell prompt and run your program:

ssh root@"IGEP IP for example: 192.168.5.1"
./"binary"  "optional:arguments"

^{Click to enlarge image}

NOTE: You cannot use igep-remote-x program because Qt-demo image doesn't have X installed.

Debug Programs

NOTE: When you debug programs using Qt Creator "Step in" and "Step Out" are not supported, because dinamic libraries symbols are not loaded by gdb.

Once you compiled the program pass it from VM to IGEP via SSH, launch a terminal and type:

scp "pathtobinary" root@"IGEP IP for example: 192.168.5.1":/home/root

Get a remote shell prompt and run gdbserver:

ssh root@"IGEP IP for example: 192.168.5.1"
gdbserver "VM IP for example: 192.168.5.10":1000 "pathtobinary" "optional:armguments"

Now use the followings steps to debug program:

^{Click to enlarge image}

Image 1: set breakpoints in your source code

Image 3: use the following configuration:

• Debugger: /opt/poky/1.2/sysroots/i686-pokysdk-linux/usr/bin/armv7a-vfp-neon-poky-linux-gnueabi/arm-poky-linux-gnueabi-gdb
• Local executable: "pathtohostbinary"
• Host and port: "IGEP IP for example: 192.168.5.1":1000
• Architecture: arm
• GNU target: arm-none-linux-gnueabi
• Sysroot: (empty)
  
• Location of debugging information: (empty)
• Override host GDB start script: download gdbinit file, uncompress to home folder and select it (/home/jdoe/gdbinit)
  

NOTE: You cannot use igep-remote-x program because Qt-demo image doesn't have X installed.

x86 Platform

Build Programs

To compile to x86 go to Project use the following configuration at Projects field -> Build:

^{Click to enlarge image}

NOTE: Use Debug build if you want to debug later

Compile with: Build->Clean All and Build->Build All (Ctrl+Shift+B).

Run Programs

Use run button (Ctrl+R).

^{Click to enlarge image}

Debug Programs

Set breakpoints in your source code and press debug button (F5)

^{Click to enlarge image}