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The Symbian platform - Introduction to Qt

• Required tools
• Installing Qt and running demos
• Building your own applications
• Smart Installer
• Installing your own applications
• Running applications from command line

Required tools

See Qt for the Symbian platform Requirements to see what tools are required to use Qt for the Symbian platform.

Installing Qt and running demos

Follow the instructions found in Installing Qt on the Symbian platform from a Binary Package to learn how to install Qt using a binary package and how to build and run Qt demos.

Follow the instructions found in Installing Qt on the Symbian platform to learn how to install Qt using using source package and how to build and run the Qt demos.

Building your own applications

If you are new to Qt development, have a look at How to Learn Qt. In general, the difference between developing a Qt application on the Symbian platform compared to any of the other platforms supported by Qt is not that big.

Once you have created a .pro file for your project, generate the Symbian specific Bld.inf and .mmp files this way:

     qmake

For more information on how to use qmake have a look at the qmake Tutorial.

Now you can build the Qt for the Symbian platform application with standard build tools. By default, running make will produce binaries for the emulator. However, the Symbian platform comes with several alternative build targets, as shown in the table below:

The following lines perform a debug build for the emulator and deploy all the needed files:

     make debug-winscw

To work on your project in Carbide, simply import the .pro file by right clicking on the project explorer and executing "Import...".

Smart Installer

The Smart Installer makes sure that deployed applications have all the Qt dependencies they need to run on a device.

Download the latest release of the Smart Installer from http://get.qt.nokia.com/nokiasmartinstaller/, and install it on top of the Qt package.

Installing your own applications

To install your own applications on hardware, you need a signed .sis file. (Refer to the Platform Security Article for more informations about self-signing.) The signed .sis file can be created with make sis target. sis target is only supported for executables or projects with DEPLOYMENT statements. By default the sis target will create signed .sis file for last build target. For example, the following sequence will generate the needed makefiles, build the project for debug-winscw and release-armv5, and create self-signed .sis file for release-armv5 target:

     qmake
     make debug-winscw release-armv5
     make sis

If you want to use different certificate information or override the default target for .sis file creation you can use the environment variables as shown in the table below:

The suppported options for QT_SIS_OPTIONS:

Execute the createpackage.pl script without any parameters for detailed information about options. By default no otions are given.

For example:

    set QT_SIS_TARGET=debug-armv5
    make sis

The environment variables for make can also be given as parameters:

    make sis QT_SIS_TARGET=debug-armv5

If you want to install the program immediately, make sure that the device is connected to the computer in "PC Suite" mode, and run sis target with the QT_SIS_OPTIONS=-i, like this:

    set QT_SIS_OPTIONS=-i
    make sis

Running applications from command line

The application can be launched on the emulator using make run command.

The application can be launched on a device using make runonphone command. When this command is invoked, a .sis file is first created as if make sis command was invoked (see above for details). Note: Running the application on a device using this command requires TRK application to be running on the device.

Additional environment variables that can be utilized with these commands are: