Creating an Asteroid app

Using QtCreator

QtCreator is an integrated development environment for making Qt QML applications.

Getting the Cross Compilation Toolchain

The app creation process of AsteroidOS needs a Software Development Kit generated by OpenEmbedded. You can either grab a prebuilt SDK for the nightlies here and install it on your system or you can build it yourself as follows:

Building the Cross Compilation Toolchain

Alternatively you can also build the toolchain from source. If you’ve already got an OpenEmbedded build directory via the Building AsteroidOS page, cd to that directory. Else, create one with:

Build without containers

git clone https://github.com/AsteroidOS/asteroid
cd asteroid/

Then, build the cross compilation toolchain with:

source ./prepare-build.sh dory
bitbake meta-toolchain-qt5

Build with containers

Assuming you already prepared a docker or podman build environment like in: Building AsteroidOS.

sudo docker rm -f asteroidos-toolchain
sudo docker run -it \
  --name asteroidos-toolchain \
  -v /etc/passwd:/etc/passwd:ro \
  -u "$(id -u):$(id -g)" \
  -v "$HOME/.gitconfig:/$HOME/.gitconfig:ro" \
  -v "$(pwd):/asteroid" asteroidos-toolchain \
  bash -c "source ./prepare-build.sh dory && bitbake meta-toolchain-qt5"

or

podman run --rm -it \
  -v "$(pwd)":/asteroid:z \
  --userns keep-id asteroidos-toolchain \
  bash -c "source ./prepare-build.sh dory && bitbake meta-toolchain-qt5"

Install the SDK

If you downloaded a prebuilt SDK, run the downloaded script. If you followed the previous steps, this will have generated the same installation script in tmp-glibc/deploy/sdk/, you can run it as follows:

./tmp-glibc/deploy/sdk/oecore-x86_64-armv7vehf-neon-toolchain-nodistro.0.sh

This script will install the cross-compiler and ARM libraries in /usr/local/oecore-x86_64 by default, along with a script that needs to be sourced before every build. If you want to build a simple project via the terminal, this can be done like that:

source /usr/local/oecore-x86_64/environment-setup-armv7vehf-neon-oe-linux-gnueabi
cmake -B build
cmake --build build

Configure QtCreator for cross compilation

Before running QtCreator you must run the previously mentioned script:

source /usr/local/oecore-x86_64/environment-setup-armv7vehf-neon-oe-linux-gnueabi
qtcreator

One other environment variable needs to be set to work seamlessly with AsteroidOS:

export CMAKE_PROGRAM_PATH=/usr/local/oecore-x86_64/sysroots/armv7vehf-neon-oe-linux-gnueabi/usr/bin/

This can be done automatically by prepending source /usr/local/oecore-x86_64/environment-setup-armv7vehf-neon-oe-linux-gnueabi and the export command before #!/bin/sh in /usr/bin/qtcreator.sh

Now that you are in QtCreator go to Tools → Options → Devices

• Add a new Generic Linux Device.
• Name it "AsteroidOS Watch"
• Choose 192.168.2.15 as IP address
• Use root as user
• Choose Password authentication and leave the password field empty

Under the Kits add a kit with the previously defined device:

• Set Device type to Generic Linux Device
• Set the Device to AsteroidOS Watch
• Set the sysroot to /usr/local/oecore-x86_64/sysroots/armv7vehf-neon-oe-linux-gnueabi/
• In the CMake generator change the Generator to Unix Makefiles
• Change Qt version to None
• Change C compiler to <No compiler>
• Change C++ compiler to <No compiler>
• Change CMake Tool to System CMake at /usr/local/oecore-x86_64/usr/bin/cmake
• Clear the CMake Configuration fields

Note that if these steps are not done *in this order*, QtCreator will not let you change both the C compiler and C++ compiler to <No compiler>. Specifically, setting Qt version to None must be done first.

First app

Asteroid-helloworld can act as a cool QML demo app to make your first steps into AsteroidOS development easier. You can clone it, build it, install it and then modify it to follow your needs:

git clone https://github.com/AsteroidOS/asteroid-helloworld
cd asteroid-helloworld/
source /usr/local/oecore-x86_64/environment-setup-armv7vehf-neon-oe-linux-gnueabi
qtcreator CMakeLists.txt

Try to build and deploy the app. If it wasn’t already installed, a new icon should have already appeared on asteroid-launcher.

You can start by modifying occurrences of “asteroid-helloworld” to your app’s name. Then you can change the *.desktop file which describes the icon on the apps launcher. Then modify main.qml to describe your UI. To get started with QML development you can read the official tutorial.

Deploy an app from QtCreator

Open the project as described in the previous sections.

• Click on the Projects button on the left sidebar
• Under the Build & Run section click on the Run configuration. This opens all run settings
• Scroll down to the Run settings

Change the following Run settings:

• Set the Run configuration to Custom Executable (on AsteroidOS Watch)
• Set the Remote executable to invoker
• Add the --single-instance --type=qtcomponents-qt5 /usr/local/bin/asteroid-helloworld command line arguments

Change the following Environment variables:

• Add XDG_RUNTIME_DIR and set its value to /run/user/1000. So that the invoker works under the root user
• (Optional) Add QT_WAYLAND_DISABLE_WINDOWDECORATION with value 1. To make the app full screen and hide the titlebar

Your app should now be able to run from the application when you click the start button in the bottom left sidebar.

Tips and tricks

If you want to start your app from the command line, open a shell with SSH, connect to ceres and use invoker:

invoker --type=qtcomponents-qt5 /usr/bin/asteroid-stopwatch

If you want to disable screen locking for easier development you can enable the demo mode of mce as root with:

mcetool -D on

Troubleshooting

The most common problems stem from not following these directions *exactly*. QtCreator helpfully tries to find compilers and set variables, but tends to set things up for the desktop as the target rather than AsteroidOS, so it often gets things wrong. The first step for troubleshooting with QtCreator is to go very carefully over each of the steps listed above and verify that they all match exactly.

Could not find a package configuration file provided by "ECM"

This is most often caused not having the environment variables set up as shown above under the topic of configuring QtCreator. The environment variables must all be set and then you must lauch qtcreator *in the same shell*. If you're not sure you've done this, an easy way to check is to try this command from the command line:

echo $CC

This should result in a line like this: arm-oe-linux-gnueabi-gcc -march=armv7ve -mfpu=neon -mfloat-abi=hard --sysroot=/usr/local/oecore-x86_64/sysroots/armv7vehf-neon-oe-linux-gnueabi

If instead you get an empty line or some other non-ARM compiler, you may have made an error. One common error is to run the script directly instead of running it using source (or . on some Linux distributions). Another common error that causes the error about not finding ECM is if, in the Kit, the system CMake is used instead of the one for the AsteroidOS SDK.

= warning: The project contains C++ source files, but the currently active kit has no C++ compiler. The code model will not be fully functional.

This is not really an error but a warning. It's the result of having correctly chosen <No compiler> as per the instructions above and may safely be ignored.

file INSTALL cannot find ... .desktop

This is probably the result of a missing CMAKE_PROGRAM_PATH. As mentioned above, this must be set in order for a script that generates the desktop file to be correctly found and uses.

Remote process crashed

One possibility is that your software has a bug, but another is that the XDG_RUNTIME_DIR is not set to /run/user/1000 as mentioned above.

"I fixed it but I get the same error!"

This most often happens when something was originally wrong with the configuration, but a CMake scan was made and a possibly faulty Makefile from an earlier attempt still exists. To fix this, choose Build from the menu, and then Rescan project. This will run CMake again, ignoring existing cached values and forcing the recreation of a Makefile.