Qt 5.9 | Qt for X11 Requirements

Qt 5.9.9 Reference Documentation

# 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 |  | 2.2.0
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

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.