Creating an AsteroidOS app can be fun and rewarding. Creating an app requires the installation of the Software Development Kit (SDK) as described in Installing the SDK. The rest of this page assumes that you already have the SDK installed.

Building from the command line

Generally, to build a CMake project from the command line, use this:

export CMAKE_PROGRAM_PATH=/usr/local/oecore-x86_64/sysroots/armv7vehf-neon-oe-linux-gnueabi/usr/bin/
source /usr/local/oecore-x86_64/environment-setup-armv7vehf-neon-oe-linux-gnueabi
cmake -B build
cmake --build build

Example project

A example project, asteroid-helloworld is available as both an example and a template for new software. To fetch it from git and build it, use the following:

git clone https://github.com/AsteroidOS/asteroid-helloworld.git
cd asteroid-helloworld
export CMAKE_PROGRAM_PATH=/usr/local/oecore-x86_64/sysroots/armv7vehf-neon-oe-linux-gnueabi/usr/bin/
source /usr/local/oecore-x86_64/environment-setup-armv7vehf-neon-oe-linux-gnueabi
cmake -B build -DCMAKE_INSTALL_PREFIX:PATH=/usr
cmake --build build --target package

If everything was successful, you should now have a new library named asteroid-helloworld.so in the build directory. You should also have an .ipk file in the build directory. If the watch is connected via USB to the host computer, you can copy this to the watch and then install it with:

scp build/asteroid-helloworld*.ipk root@192.168.2.15:.
ssh root@192.168.2.15 "opkg install asteroid-helloworld*.ipk"

Note that we specify the CMAKE_INSTALL_PREFIX in the commands above. This is to assure that the package is built to install the software in /usr/lib/ rather than /usr/local/lib/ which would otherwise be the default. The --target package instructs CMake to build a package the .ipk file in our case.

Once the software is installed, is should show up as the last item on the launcher page. Pressing the icon should show an orange background with the words "Hello World!" in white. You should make sure all of this works before working with

Using QtCreator

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

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:

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 Edit → Preferences → 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.