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Running a QML HMI on an ARM11 without OpenGL

Recently, I brought up Qt 5.5 on a Freescale i.MX35, which has an ARM11 CPU but no OpenGL support. Despite the missing OpenGL, I wanted to write the HMI with QML. The additional challenge was that the cross-compilation toolchain was 32-bit, but I wanted to use my standard 64-bit Ubuntu. I’ll show in this post how to set up the 32-bit toolchain and rootfs on my 64-bit Ubuntu machine, how to configure and build Qt 5.5 from the sources, and how to run a hello-world application written in QML on the i.MX35.

The Challenges

I was recently tasked to bring up Qt 5.5 on Wachendorff’s display computer OPUS A3s and build a QML demo for it. The OPUS A3s is based on the Freescale i.MX35 system on chip (SoC), which has an ARM11 CPU but no OpenGL acceleration.

Harvester HMI (QML) running on Wachendorff's display computer OPUS A3 (i.MX35, no OpenGL).

Harvester HMI (QML) running on Wachendorff’s display computer OPUS A3 (i.MX35, no OpenGL).

My first thought – and the first challenge – was that QML requires OpenGL to work and that the QPA plugin for software rendering is only available under the commercial Qt license. But then my personal Qt historian Dario Freddi reminded me that in the olden days QML (Qt 4.8) used to run just with the software renderer and that this feature still lives on in Qt 5.5 with QtQuick 1 and QtDeclarative. In short, QtQuick 2 requires OpenGL but QtQuick 1 does not. Phew, no Qt commercial license needed and lots of euros saved!

The second challenge was that Wachendorff provided a toolchain with 32-bit tools and a 32-bit Ubuntu 10.10. As Ubuntu 10.10 is not supported any more, I wanted to use at least the lastest 64-bit Ubuntu with long-term support (v14.04) or best the very latest 64-bit Ubuntu (v15.10). Unfortunately, the 32-bit versions of the gcc compilers do not simply run on a 64-bit system. This can be solved by installing some libraries including the standard C and C++ libraries on the 64-bit Ubuntu development machine. I describe the installation of the toolchain and root file system in the section Setting Up the Development Environment.

The third challenge is to create an “mkspec” or “make spec” for a new device, the i.MX35, and to configure and build Qt 5.5 from the GitHub sources for this device. The make specs of the Rasperry Pi (another ARM11 SoC) and of the i.MX53 (another Freescale SoC) will be a good reference for the make spec. Section Configuring and Building Qt 5.5 from Sources gives the details.

The fourth and final challenge is to run a sample QML app on the target device, the OPUS A3s. We must tell the app, which device files send the events for the function keys, the rotary knob and the touches and whether to rotate the touch coordinate system. I explain these things in section Building and Running a QML App on the Target.

Although my target device is a Wachendorff OPUS A3s with an i.MX35 SoC, most of my explanations apply to every SoC. It does not make much of a difference whether we bring up Qt on a Freescale i.MX35/i.MX53/i.MX6, Texas Instruments Jacinto 5/6 or an Nvidia Tegra 2/3. Once we have understood the essential steps, it just small adjustments like the path to the C++ compiler, the sysroot path, the Qt modules that can or cannot be built for the target device or the environment variables needed for running the QML app.

Above is a photo of the home screen of the harvester HMI I have been building for the OPUS A3s (i.MX35). The needles of the two dials change every 50ms (20 times per second). All the other information – the diesel gauge, the gear info, the speed and the up to five warning indicators at the top – change once a second. Although the i.MX35 does not have OpenGL acceleration, the CPU load comes in at an average of only 27% – with peaks up to 35%. This is pretty good for a low-end device like the i.MX35.

Setting Up the Development Environment

Installing Packages Needed for Building Qt

My development machine is a 64-bit Ubuntu 15.10 virtual machine hosted by VmWare Fusion on my Macbook Pro. A well-equipped Windows laptop or PC with VmWare or VirtualBox would do as well. When starting with a fresh Ubuntu installation, many packages needed for development are missing.

A good starting point is to install all the packages needed to build Qt from sources. As Qt is quite a kraken, we are done more often than not. And – we need all the Qt dependencies anyway, because we will build Qt both for our Ubuntu machine and for the target hardware. The documentation page Building Qt 5 from Git lists the required packages neatly.

Ubuntu has a nifty command to install all the packages needed to build a package – qt5-default in our case:

$ sudo apt-get build-dep qt5-default

The next command pulls in tools needed for building software. The perl and python packages are typically already installed in a standard Ubuntu image. Then, they get updated by this command.

$ sudo apt-get install build-essential perl python git

Especially if you have been around Qt for some years, it is hard to believe that these two innocuous commands do all the heavy lifting. But they do! No more cumbersome figuring out which packages are needed.

If we want to build some special Qt modules like WebKit, WebEngine and Multimedia or if we need the latest version of some packages like XCB (the default QPA plugin for X11), we must install some more packages. I don’t care about web things at the moment, but the other two could be interesting.

// For XCB:
$ sudo apt-get install "^libxcb.*" libx11-xcb-dev libglu1-mesa-dev libxrender-dev libxi-dev

// For Multimedia:
$ sudo apt-get install libasound2-dev libgstreamer0.10-dev libgstreamer-plugins-base0.10-dev

Installing the Toolchain and Root File System

Wachendorff, the manufacturer of the OPUS A3s display computer, gives us a tarball linux-opusa3-2.0.3.tgz. When we unpack this tarball, we find a tarball for the toolchain in the subdirectory linux-opusa3-2.0.3/toolchain and a tarball for the root file system in linux-opusa3-2.0.3/rootfs. These two tarballs are all we need.

First, we unpack the tarball for the toolchain.

$ cd /
$ sudo tar xzf /path/to/linux-opusa3-2.0.3/toolchain/tc_arm_gcc-4.6.2-glibc-2.13-linaro-multilib-2011.12-1.tar.gz

This unpacks the toolchain into the directory /opt/freescale. As I work with different SoCs, different toolchains and even different versions of the same toolchain, I renamed this directory /opt/imx35-gcc-4.6.2-glibc-2.13 and created a symbolic link /opt/imx35 to it for convenience.

$ cd /opt
$ sudo mv freescale imx35-gcc-4.6.2-glibc-2.13
$ sudo ln -s imx35-gcc-4.6.2-glibc-2.13 imx35

From now on, the toolchain with the C++ compiler and the linker is located at /opt/imx35.

Second, we unpack the tarball for the root file system.

$ mkdir -p ~/Wachendorff/OpusA3
$ cd ~/Wachendorff/OpusA3
$ tar xzf /path/to/linux-opusa3-2.0.3/rootfs/rootfs-opusa3_2.0.3.tar.gz

This unpacks the root file system into the directory ~/Wachendorff/OpusA3/rootfs. The root file system contains all the files that are needed to run our applications on the target device.

By the way, it does not matter where we install the toolchain and the root file system. We only need to pass these two locations to Qt’s configure command.

Running a 32-bit GCC on a 64-bit Ubuntu Machine

The installed toolchain comes with 32-bit executables made for cross-compiling from an i386 development PC to an ARM11 target device. If we try to cross-compile a simple hello-world app

#include <iostream>

int main(int argc, char** argv) {
    std::cout << "Hello World!" << std::endl;
}

with the command

$ /path/to/arm-fsl-linux-gnueabi-g++ -o hello main.cpp

the answer will be something along the lines:

bash: /path/to/arm-fsl-linux-gnueabi-g++: No such file or directory

The error message is not really helpful. It took me some time to understand that I had run into a 32-bit versus 64-bit problem. Running ldd on the executable of the cross-compiler finally revealed that the libraries libc.so.6 and /lib/ld-linux.so.2 were missing. The second one gives away that the linker was looking for a 32-bit version, because the 64-bit version is /lib64/ld-linux-x86-64.so.2.

After a bit of “duckduckgoing”, I came across the answer on the AskUbuntu forum. We must install libc6, libstdc++6 and libncurses5 for the i386 architecture. The following three commands do the trick.

$ sudo dpkg --add-architecture i386
$ sudo apt-get update
$ sudo apt-get install libc6:i386 libncurses5:i386 libstdc++6:i386

Now, cross-compiling our hello-world app works fine.

Configuring and Building Qt 5.5 from Sources

Getting the Qt Sources from Git

Getting the Qt source code from Git is described in the Qt documentation at Building Qt 5 from Git – Getting the source code.

We clone the top-level Qt5 git repository in a directory of our choice, say ~/Qt.

$ mkdir ~/Qt
$ cd ~/Qt
$ git clone https://code.qt.io/qt/qt5.git

We clone all the Qt submodules like qtbase, qt3d and qtwebengine by running the init-repository script. As we do not need qtwebkit, we skip cloning it by the option --no-webkit.

$ cd ~/Qt/q5
$ perl init-repository --no-webkit

Now, the complete Qt5 repository is locally available in our Ubuntu machine. Qt 5.5.1 was the latest released version of Qt at the time of writing. So, we check out the tag “v5.5.1” into the new branch qt-5.5.1.

$ cd ~/Qt/qt5
$ git checkout -b qt-5.5.1 v5.5.1

In ~/Qt/qt5, we have the versions of the Qt sources that went into the Qt release v5.5.1.

Instead of cloning the Qt sources from the git repository, we could download the source tarball for Qt 5.5.1 from the Download page. However, I have found out over the years that nearly every project needs some changes, extensions or bug fixes to Qt. I prefer to have these modifications under version control, which is easy with the git repository.

Defining the Make Spec and Configure Command Iteratively

The keyword in the section title is “iteratively”. I have never been able to come up with a make spec and configure command first time right – despite having plenty of exercise over the years. Creating a make spec and figuring out the write options for the configure command are an iterative process.

First Iteration

We find the make specs for several common SoCs in the directory ~/Qt/qt5/qtbase/mkspecs/devices. There is no make spec for the i.MX35 though. The closest SoC is the i.MX53, the big brother of the i.MX35. Its make spec ~/Qt/qt5/qtbase/mkspecs/devices/linux-imx53qsb-g++/qmake.conf looks as follows.

# qmake.conf for i.MX53
include(../common/linux_device_pre.conf)

QMAKE_LIBS_EGL         += -lEGL
QMAKE_LIBS_OPENGL_ES2  += -lGLESv2 -lEGL
QMAKE_LIBS_OPENVG      += -lOpenVG -lEGL

IMX5_CFLAGS             = -march=armv7-a -mfpu=neon -DLINUX=1 -DEGL_API_FB=1 -Wno-psabi
QMAKE_CFLAGS           += $IMX5_CFLAGS
QMAKE_CXXFLAGS         += $IMX5_CFLAGS

include(../common/linux_arm_device_post.conf)

load(qt_config)

As the i.MX35 does not support OpenGL, we can remove the three lines about QMAKE_LIBS_*.

The i.MX35 is part of the ARM11 family. A look at the list of ARM microarchitectures reveals that the ARM11 family uses the ARMv6 architecture. In contrast to the i.MX35, the i.MX53 with a Cortex-A8 core uses the ARMv7-A architecture. Hence, the CFLAGS for the i.MX35 differ from those of the i.MX53.

At this point, we are looking for a sample make spec based on the ARMv6 architecture. We either know that the Raspberry Pi is part of the ARM11 family as well or we just search all make specs for “armv6”.

$ cd ~/Qt/qt5/qtbase/mkspecs/devices
$ find . -name "qmake.conf" | xargs grep -i armv6
./linux-rasp-pi-g++/qmake.conf:                          -march=armv6zk \

The relevant lines of the Raspberry Pi’s make spec read as follow:

QMAKE_CFLAGS += \
    -marm -march=armv6zk -mtune=arm1176jzf-s \
    -mfpu=vfp -mabi=aapcs-linux

We figure out the correct values for the above machine options by checking out the datasheet of the i.MX35. Section “2.4 ARM11 Microprocessor Core” gives us the needed information. The i.MX35 uses an ARM1136JF-S core (hence, -mtune=arm1136jf-s), which has a vector floating point co-processor (hence, -mfpu=vfp). Looking up the ARM1136JF-S core in the list of ARM microarchitectures tells us that its architecture is neither ARMv6Z (not TrustZone support) nor ARMv6K (no multi-core) but simply ARMv6 (hence, -march=armv6). Using the “ARM Architecture Procedure Call Standard” (AAPCS) for Linux as the ABI sounds reasonable (hence, -mabi=aapcs-linux.

We can check the admissible values of the machine options on the page “ARM Options” of the GCC documentation. All is fine!

We have just finished the first version of qmake.conf of our make spec for the i.MX35.

# qmake.conf for i.MX35
include(../common/linux_device_pre.conf)

IMX35_CFLAGS += \
    -marm \
    -mfpu=vfp \
    -mtune=arm1136jf-s \
    -march=armv6 \
    -mabi=aapcs-linux
QMAKE_CFLAGS += $IMX35_CFLAGS
QMAKE_CXXFLAGS += $IMX35_CFLAGS

include(../common/linux_arm_device_post.conf)
load(qt_config)

Besides the qmake.conf file, the make spec contains another file, qplatformdefs.h. This one is easy as it is the same for all Linux devices. So, we can simply copy it, say, from the make spec of the i.MX53. It contains one line:

#include "../../linux-g++/qplatformdefs.h"

All we need now is a configure command. I’ll show you my first version and show you how I came up with all the options.

../qt5/configure  -v -opensource -confirm-license \
    -release -prefix /opt/qt-5.5.1-imx35 \
    -device linux-imx35-g++ \
    -sysroot /home/burkhard/Wachendorff/OpusA3/rootfs \
    -device-option CROSS_COMPILE=/opt/imx35/usr/local/gcc-4.6.2-glibc-2.13-linaro-multilib-2011.12/fsl-linaro-toolchain/bin/arm-fsl-linux-gnueabi- \
    -linuxfb -qpa linuxfb -no-eglfs -no-directfb -no-kms -no-opengl \
    -no-dbus -no-largefile -no-qml-debug -nomake tests -nomake examples -no-gstreamer \
    -skip qtenginio -skip qtlocation -skip qtmultimedia -skip qtpim -skip qtwayland \
    -skip qtwebchannel -skip qtwebengine -skip qtwebkit -skip qtwebsockets

I always run configure in verbose mode (-v) to get more information why configure failed. I use Qt under LGPLv3 (-opensource). I don’t want configure to stop and ask me to configure the license (-confirm-license).

I typically start with a release build (-release), because it builds much faster than a debug build and it shows how fast our HMI runs on the target device. Building Qt as fast as possible is paramount, because the Qt build is likely to fail. If the build fails, we want it to fail fast. The option -prefix /opt/qt-5.5.1-imx35 specifies that Qt will be installed in the directory /opt/qt-5.5.1-imx35 on the target device.

The option -device linux-imx35-g++ tells the configure command to use the make spec we just created.

The options -sysroot and -device-option tell the configure command and later qmake commands where to find the root file system and the toolchain, respectively. The value of -sysroot is the directory, ~/Wachendorff/OpusA3/rootfs, where we unpacked the tarball with the root file system. The option -device-option defines the environment variable CROSS_COMPILE as the prefix of the path to tools like gcc, g++, objcopy and strip in the toolchain. These tools are located in the directory

/opt/imx35/usr/local/gcc-4.6.2-glibc-2.13-linaro-multilib-2011.12/fsl-linaro-toolchain/bin/

and start with the prefix arm-fsl-linux-gnueabi-. For example,

/opt/imx35/usr/local/gcc-4.6.2-glibc-2.13-linaro-multilib-2011.12/fsl-linaro-toolchain/bin/arm-fsl-linux-gnueabi-g++

is the C++ compiler for cross-compiling Qt. The environment variable CROSS_COMPILE is used in the configuration file linux_device_pre.conf included by our make spec file. It used to define qmake’s tool variables:

QMAKE_CC                = ${CROSS_COMPILE}gcc
QMAKE_CXX               = ${CROSS_COMPILE}g++
# More ...

We should never hard-code the root-fs path or the cross-compile path prefix into any configuration file or any Qt project file. As true believers of the DRY principle (“don’t repeat yourself”), we should define these paths only once – in the options of the configure command. If we need to define more environment variables for the configuration of Qt, we can add another -device-option option with the definition of another environment variable.

The options

-linuxfb -qpa linuxfb -no-eglfs -no-directfb -no-kms -no-opengl

specify that we want to use the Linux framebuffer (-linuxfb) as the window-system backend (a.k.a. QPA plugin) and that the Linux framebuffer is the default QPA plugin (-qpa linuxfb). Defining the default QPA plugin saves from passing the command-line option -qpa linuxfb when we start our application. We do not build the QPA plugins eglfs, directfb and kms and turn off OpenGL support, as none of these is supported by our target device.

The final three lines of options

    -no-dbus -no-largefile -no-qml-debug -nomake tests -nomake examples -no-gstreamer \
    -skip qtenginio -skip qtlocation -skip qtmultimedia -skip qtpim -skip qtwayland \
    -skip qtwebchannel -skip qtwebengine -skip qtwebkit -skip qtwebsockets

excludes every feature and module that we don’t need for the initial run of our application. Remember that we want our build to fail fast – and fail it will. Once we have a working build and a running sample app, we can add features and modules as we need them.

Now we are finally ready to run the configure command. We will perform a shadow build outside the Qt sources, because it is pretty likely that we will build multiple versions of Qt (for example, a 64-bit version for our Ubuntu machine or a debug version for the i.MX35).

// Create directory for shadow build
$ cd ~/Qt
$ mkdir build-qt-5.5.1-imx35
$ cd build-qt-5.5.1-imx35
$ ../qt5/configure  -v -opensource -confirm-license \
    -release -prefix /opt/qt-5.5.1-imx35 \
    -device linux-imx35-g++ \
    -sysroot /home/burkhard/Wachendorff/OpusA3/rootfs \
    -device-option CROSS_COMPILE=/opt/imx35/usr/local/gcc-4.6.2-glibc-2.13-linaro-multilib-2011.12/fsl-linaro-toolchain/bin/arm-fsl-linux-gnueabi- \
    -linuxfb -qpa linuxfb -no-eglfs -no-directfb -no-kms -no-opengl \
    -no-dbus -no-largefile -no-qml-debug -nomake tests -nomake examples -no-gstreamer \
    -skip qtenginio -skip qtlocation -skip qtmultimedia -skip qtpim -skip qtwayland \
    -skip qtwebchannel -skip qtwebengine -skip qtwebkit -skip qtwebsockets

Bad news! As expected the configuration command fails. All feature tests fail because the C++ compiler cannot find system headers. It cannot even find a header like stdio.h. Something is fundamentally wrong. Let us have a closer look at the first feature that fails.

Determining architecture... ()
/opt/imx35/.../bin/arm-fsl-linux-gnueabi-g++ \
    -c -pipe -marm -mfpu=vfp -mtune=arm1136jf-s -march=armv6 -mabi=aapcs-linux \
    -mfloat-abi=softfp --sysroot=/home/burkhard/Wachendorff/OpusA3/rootfs \
    -g -Wall -W -fPIC  -I../../../../qt5/qtbase/config.tests/arch -I. \
    -I../../../../qt5/qtbase/mkspecs/devices/linux-imx35-g++ -o arch.o \ 
    ../../../../qt5/qtbase/config.tests/arch/arch.cpp
../../../../qt5/qtbase/config.tests/arch/arch.cpp:37:19: fatal error: stdio.h: No such file or directory
compilation terminated.
Makefile:207: recipe for target 'arch.o' failed
make: *** [arch.o] Error 1
Unable to determine architecture!

Searching for the file stdio.h in the root file system yields nothing. Searching for it in the toolchain yields three hits. The relevant hit is

/opt/imx35/.../arm-fsl-linux-gnueabi/multi-libs/default/usr/include/stdio.h

Running the command

/opt/imx35/.../bin/arm-fsl-linux-gnueabi-g++ -print-sysroot

yields

/opt/imx35/.../arm-fsl-linux-gnueabi/multi-libs/default/

as the standard sysroot of the compiler. By passing a different sysroot to the compiler, we override the standard sysroot. The compiler looks for system headers in the new sysroot. And we know that it cannot find these headers there. Let us test our theory and run just the failing test for determining the architecture again – but this time without the sysroot option.

$ cd ~/Qt/build-qt-5.5.1-imx35/qtbase/config.tests/arch
$ /opt/imx35/.../bin/arm-fsl-linux-gnueabi-g++ \
    -c -pipe -marm -mfpu=vfp -mtune=arm1136jf-s -march=armv6 -mabi=aapcs-linux \
    -mfloat-abi=softfp \
    -g -Wall -W -fPIC  -I../../../../qt5/qtbase/config.tests/arch -I. \
    -I../../../../qt5/qtbase/mkspecs/devices/linux-imx35-g++ -o arch.o \ 
    ../../../../qt5/qtbase/config.tests/arch/arch.cpp

Now the compile command works. Tweaking the command line of a feature test in isolation is a common trick to solve the configuration problems. So, add it to your bag of tricks.

We must tell configure somehow that it should not use our sysroot but the compiler’s sysroot. We apply wishful thinking and hope that configure provides some option for that already.

$ cd ~/Qt/build-qt-5.5.1-imx35
$ ../qt5/configure -help | grep sysroot
    -sysroot <dir> ...... Sets <dir> as the target compiler's and qmake's sysroot and also sets pkg-config paths.
    -no-gcc-sysroot ..... When using -sysroot, it disables the passing of --sysroot to the compiler

And bingo! It worked. The second option -no-gcc-sysroot is exactly what we wished for.

Second Iteration

We add the option -no-gcc-sysroot to the configure command from the first iteration and try our luck again.

$ cd ~/Qt/build-qt-5.5.1-imx35
$ ../qt5/configure  -v -opensource -confirm-license \
    -release -prefix /opt/qt-5.5.1-imx35 \
    -device linux-imx35-g++ \
    -no-gcc-sysroot -sysroot /home/burkhard/Wachendorff/OpusA3/rootfs \
    -device-option CROSS_COMPILE=/opt/imx35/usr/local/gcc-4.6.2-glibc-2.13-linaro-multilib-2011.12/fsl-linaro-toolchain/bin/arm-fsl-linux-gnueabi- \
    -linuxfb -qpa linuxfb -no-eglfs -no-directfb -no-kms -no-opengl \
    -no-dbus -no-largefile -no-qml-debug -nomake tests -nomake examples -no-gstreamer \
    -skip qtenginio -skip qtlocation -skip qtmultimedia -skip qtpim -skip qtwayland \
    -skip qtwebchannel -skip qtwebengine -skip qtwebkit -skip qtwebsockets

The configure command runs to the end successfully. On first glance, the summary looks pretty reasonable. LinuxFB is listed as the only QPA backend. OpenGL is disabled. Evdev, which handles touch, keyboard and rotary-encoder output, is enabled. The other features are disabled or enabled as specified in the configure command.

On second glance, there are few minor things that need at least an explanation and possibly a fix. Here are the suspicious lines.

  Image formats: 
    GIF .................. yes (plugin, using bundled copy)
    JPEG ................. yes (plugin, using bundled copy)
    PNG .................. yes (in QtGui, using bundled copy)
  tslib .................. no
  zlib ................... yes (bundled copy)

Since the arrival of the Linux v3.x kernels, tslib is not needed any more to handle touch input. Touch input is now handled by evdev. Hence, tslib need not be built and the “no” is OK.

It is a bit strange that the Qt build wants to use the copies of the jpeg, png and zlib libraries bundled with Qt. It should use the system libraries, which are available on every proper Linux system. A quick search through our root file system shows that the Linux system provided by Wachendorff is proper. The headers and libraries exist.

With the -no-gcc-sysroot option, we told g++ to ignore our sysroot, which points to our root file system. Obviously, the jpeg, png and zlib headers and libraries are not contained in the toolchain. As we do not want these libraries twice on the target system – once provided by the system and once by Qt, we make the configure command pick up the system versions. We do this by adding include and library search directories to our make spec. The modified qmake.conf looks as follows.

include(../common/linux_device_pre.conf)

IMX35_CFLAGS += \
    -marm \
    -mfpu=vfp \
    -mtune=arm1136jf-s \
    -march=armv6 \
    -mabi=aapcs-linux

QMAKE_INCDIR += $[QT_SYSROOT]/usr/include
QMAKE_LIBDIR += $[QT_SYSROOT]/usr/lib
QMAKE_CFLAGS += $IMX35_CFLAGS
QMAKE_CXXFLAGS += $IMX35_CFLAGS

include(../common/linux_arm_device_post.conf)
load(qt_config)

$$[QT_SYSROOT] refers to the value of the -sysroot option defined in the configure command. It is time for the third iteration.

Third Iteration

We run the same configure command as for the second iteration. The command will use our modified qmake.conf file.

$ cd ~/Qt/build-qt-5.5.1-imx35
$ ../qt5/configure  -v -opensource -confirm-license \
    -release -prefix /opt/qt-5.5.1-imx35 \
    -device linux-imx35-g++ \
    -no-gcc-sysroot -sysroot /home/burkhard/Wachendorff/OpusA3/rootfs \
    -device-option CROSS_COMPILE=/opt/imx35/usr/local/gcc-4.6.2-glibc-2.13-linaro-multilib-2011.12/fsl-linaro-toolchain/bin/arm-fsl-linux-gnueabi- \
    -linuxfb -qpa linuxfb -no-eglfs -no-directfb -no-kms -no-opengl \
    -no-dbus -no-largefile -no-qml-debug -nomake tests -nomake examples -no-gstreamer \
    -skip qtenginio -skip qtlocation -skip qtmultimedia -skip qtpim -skip qtwayland \
    -skip qtwebchannel -skip qtwebengine -skip qtwebkit -skip qtwebsockets

The summary looks better now, but not yet perfect. The critical lines from the second iteration have changed as follows.

  Image formats:
    GIF .................. yes (plugin, using bundled copy)
    JPEG ................. yes (plugin, using system library)
    PNG .................. yes (in QtGui, using bundled copy)
  tslib .................. yes
  zlib ................... yes (system library)

The enabling of tslib is collateral damage from adding the include directory in our root file system. If we want to disable tslib and gif, we can add the options -no-tslib -no-gif to the configure command.

The png library remains stubborn. A quick look into the verbose output of configure shows that the linker complains:

$ /opt/.../bin/arm-fsl-linux-gnueabi-g++ -mfloat-abi=softfp -Wl,-O1 -o libpng libpng.o -L/home/burkhard/Wachendorff/OpusA3/rootfs/usr/lib -lpng
/opt/.../arm-fsl-linux-gnueabi/bin/ld: warning: libz.so.1, needed by /home/.../OpusA3/rootfs/usr/lib/libpng.so, not found (try using -rpath or -rpath-link)

The executable libpng links directly against libpng.so, which links directly against libz.so.1. Hence, libpng links indirectly or implicitly against libz.so.1. We could fix this problem quick and dirty by adding -lz at the end of the linker command (after -lpng). This would only solve the linking problem for libz, but not for any other library linked against implicitly.

Fortunately, the error message gives us a hint how to solve this problem generally: “try using -rpath or -rpath-link”. Whereas the option -rpath is for finding libraries at runtime, the option -rpath-link is for finding libraries at linktime. We insert the line

QMAKE_LFLAGS += -Wl,-rpath-link,$[QT_SYSROOT]/usr/lib

after the definition of QMAKE_LIBDIR into our qmake.conf file. It is time for the fourth iteration.

Fourth Iteration

We run configure with gif and tslib disabled on the modified make spec.

$ cd ~/Qt/build-qt-5.5.1-imx35
$ ../qt5/configure  -v -opensource -confirm-license \
    -release -prefix /opt/qt-5.5.1-imx35 \
    -device linux-imx35-g++ \
    -no-gcc-sysroot -sysroot /home/burkhard/Wachendorff/OpusA3/rootfs \
    -device-option CROSS_COMPILE=/opt/imx35/usr/local/gcc-4.6.2-glibc-2.13-linaro-multilib-2011.12/fsl-linaro-toolchain/bin/arm-fsl-linux-gnueabi- \
    -linuxfb -qpa linuxfb -no-eglfs -no-directfb -no-kms -no-opengl \
    -no-gif -no-tslib -no-dbus -no-largefile -no-qml-debug -nomake tests -nomake examples -no-gstreamer \
    -skip qtenginio -skip qtlocation -skip qtmultimedia -skip qtpim -skip qtwayland \
    -skip qtwebchannel -skip qtwebengine -skip qtwebkit -skip qtwebsockets

Finally, the configure summary is perfect. The features gif and tslib are disabled and png uses the system library. It is high time to kick off the build.

$ cd ~/Qt/build-qt-5.5.1-imx35
$ make -j4

Surprise! The build succeeded. It is not unusual for the build to fail, because some headers or libraries cannot be found or because we forgot to skip some modules or to disable some features. Then we must fix the problem either in the make spec or in the configure command and re-configure and re-build Qt again.

Now we are good to install Qt.

$ make install

Qt is installed into <sysroot>/<prefix>, that is, into ~/Wachendorff/OpusA3/rootfs/opt/qt-5.5.1-imx35.

You can download the complete make spec from here. Just unpack the ZIP archive in the directory ~/Qt/qt5/qtbase/mkspecs/devices.

Building and Running a QML App on the Target Device

Connecting the Target Device with the Development Computer

We need a way to transfer files like Qt and the HelloWorld app from the development computer to the target device. Obviously, the OPUS A3 also needs power for that.

We stick the red plug “Clamp 15 Ignition” into the side of the red plug “Clamp 30 Plus”. We stick the red plug “Clamp 30 Plus” into the Plus socket of the power supply and the black plug “Clamp 31 CarGND” into the Minus socket. The plug with the big cable bundle goes into the back of the OPUS A3. We connect the USB-to-serial adapter with the USB port of the computer and the RS232 cable of the OPUS A3. That’s all the wiring we need.

We set the power supply to 12V and power up the OPUS A3. The result should look as shown in this photo.

dev-setup-3

As I have never managed to get a terminal emulator like putty or screen running in a Ubuntu virtual machine, I run it on my host computer, a Macbook Pro laptop. I start the Terminal application and run the screen terminal emulator in it.

$ screen /dev/cu.usbserial 115200

Then, the OPUS A3 asks me for the login name (“root”) and the password, which we find in Wachendorff’s developer documentation. Then, we see the prompt from the OPUS A3 system and can run any Linux commands. For example:

root@rosi ~$ uname -a
Linux rosi 3.0.35-rt56-opusa3-2.0.3-1 #5 PREEMPT Tue Apr 7 08:42:30 CEST 2015 armv6l GNU/Linux

We will use a USB drive to transfer data from the development machine to the OPUS A3. It is not as elegant a solution as NFS but it always works. NFS needs a network connection over Ethernet, WLAN or USB. I haven’t yet got around to set this up.

Setting Up QtCreator

We can download QtCreator from the Qt Download page. “Qt Creator 3.6.0 for Linux/X11 64-bit” is the one we want. Download the installer qt-creator-opensource-linux-x86_64-3.6.0.run, make it executable, run it, and follow the installation instructions. You can install QtCreator where you want. Mine is installed in ~/Qt/qtcreator-3.6.0, for example.

We need to make QtCreator aware of three things: the Qt version we just built, the i.MX35 toolchain, and that the two should be used together when we build our own applications.

First, we specify the Qt version we just built. Open the “Tools | Options” and select the tab page “Build & Run | Qt Versions”. Press the “Add” button. QtCreator opens a file dialog, in which we select the qmake executable from our Qt build. The qmake executable is located in /home/…/rootfs/opt/qt-5.5.1-imx35/bin/qmake. The tab page “Qt Versions” should look similar to this screenshot.

screenshot-qt-versions

The version name “Qt 5.5.1 (qt-5.5.1-imx35)” is pretty telling. So, we keep it. We accept the new Qt version by pressing the “Apply” button.

Second, we make QtCreator aware of the cross-compiler we installed as part of the toolchain. On the dialog “Tools | Options”, we select the tab page “Build & Run | Compilers”. We press the “Add” button and select “GCC” from the dropdown menu. This gives us an empty form.

screenshot-compilers-1

Change the “Name” to something more telling, say, “GCC 4.6.2 (armv6)”. Press the “Browse” button and select the C++ cross-compiler from the toolchain in the file dialog. The C++ cross-compiler is located at /opt/imx35/…/fsl-linaro-toolchain/bin/arm-fsl-linux-gnueabi-g++. QtCreator fills out the last line “ABI” of the form automatically. The form should look similar to this screenshot.

screenshot-compilers-2

We accept the new compiler by pressing the “Apply” button.

Finally, we must tell QtCreator that it should use the compiler “GCC 4.6.2 (armv6)” when it builds an application for the Qt version “Qt 5.5.1 (qt-5.5.1-imx35)”. We do this by adding the compiler and the Qt version to a so-called kit. On the dialog “Tools | Options”, we select the tab page “Build & Run | Compilers”. When we press the “Add” button, we get the following empty form.

screenshot-kits-1

We fill out this form such that it reflects the following screenshot at the end.

screenshot-kits-2

Building the HelloWorld App for the Target Device

You can download the HelloWorld app from my website. This QML app provides just a yellow button on a blue background. By tapping on the button or by pressing the F1 function key, the button toggles its colour between yellow and orange. The app prints the key code on the console. This is enough to figure out whether touch and key input are working. Additionally, we can figure out the codes for the different keys of the OPUS A3. If this simple app works fine, we can be pretty sure that any QML app will work fine as well. When we run the app on our Ubuntu machine, it looks as follows.

helloworld-2

When you open the HelloWorld project for the first time in QtCreator, QtCreator asks you to select the relevant kits.

helloworld-1

Check the box left to “Opus A3 (Qt 5.5.1)” and then click the “Configure Project” button. This gives us a Qt kit for the target device “Opus A3 (Qt 5.5.1)” and a kit for the Ubuntu machine “Qt 5.5.1 Debug 64bit”. This is exactly what we want. We will develop our apps on the Ubuntu machine first and deploy and run them on the target device then. If you forget to check the kit for the OPUS A3, you can make up for it later. Go to the settings page “Projects | Build & Run” of the HelloWorld project and press the “Add Kit” button at the top left.

In the “Build & Run” configurator near the left bottom corner of QtCreator, we select Project “HelloWorld”, Kit “Opus A3 (Qt 5.5.1)”, Build “Release” and Run “HelloWorld (on Remote Device)”.

helloworld-3

We build the HelloWorld app by pressing “Ctrl+B” or by selecting “Build | Build Project “HelloWorld””. The build should work fine and use the cross-compiler from our toolchain. The executable, which also contains the only QML file main.qml, is written to the shadow build directory ../build-HelloWorld-Opus_A3_Qt_5_5_1-Release/HelloWorld (relative to HelloWorld’s project file). We are ready to deploy Qt and our HelloWorld app to the target device.

Deploying Qt and HelloWorld App to Target Device

We deploy Qt and the HelloWorld app to the target device, the OPUS A3, the old-fashioned way. We copy Qt and the app from the Ubuntu machine to a USB drive, plug the USB drive into the USB jack of the OPUS A3, and copy Qt and the app from the USB drive to the /opt directory of the OPUS A3.

First, we create a tarball for Qt. The Qt installation directory /home/…/rootfs/opt/qt-5.5.1-imx35 has the following subdirectories

$ cd ~/Wachendorff/OpusA3/rootfs/opt
$ ls -1 qt-5.5.1-imx35/
bin
doc
imports
include
lib
mkspecs
plugins
qml
translations

We only need the subdirectories given in bold face for running apps on the target device. The other subdirectories are only interesting for building these apps. This saves a lot of space on the target device. We create the Qt tarball containing the relevant subdirectories on a USB drive. Don’t forget to plugin the USB drive into your Ubuntu machine before executing the next command.

$ cd ~/Wachendorff/OpusA3/rootfs/opt
$ tar czf /media/burkhard/DISK_IMG/qt-5.5.1-imx35.tgz \
    qt-5.5.1-imx35/imports/ qt-5.5.1-imx35/lib/ qt-5.5.1-imx35/plugins/ \
    qt-5.5.1-imx35/qml/ qt-5.5.1-imx35/translations

Next, we copy the HelloWorld executable from the shadow build directory to the USB drive.

$ cd ~/Wachendorff/OpusA3/build-HelloWorld-Opus_A3_Qt_5_5_1-Release
$ cp ./HelloWorld /media/burkhard/DISK_IMG

Eject the USB drive properly from your Ubuntu machine and plug it into the USB port of the OPUS A3. If not done, power up the OPUS A3 and log into it via a terminal emulator. The USB drive is mounted under /disk/usbsda on the OPUS A3. Install Qt and the HelloWorld app at the right place. Don’t forget to make the HelloWorld app executable.

imx35$ cd /opt
imx35$ tar xzf /disk/usbsda/qt-5.5.1-imx35.tgz
imx35$ cp /disk/usbsda/HelloWorld .
imx35$ chmod a+x ./HelloWorld

Running HelloWorld App on Target Device

The big moment is very near. We are about to run the HelloWorld app for the very first time. Drum roll, please!!!

imx35$ cd /opt
imx35$ ./HelloWorld &

5, 4, 3, 2, 1 … and our fantastic HelloWorld app shows up on the target device.

helloworld-4

The F1 function key is the top button at the left side of the OPUS A3. Pressing this button or any other hard button on the OPUS A3 doesn’t yield any response – not even debug message in the terminal.

Tapping the yellow on-screen button doesn’t have any effect either. But don’t give up with touch too early. Touch could be decalibrated or the touch coordinate system could be rotated. Tap all over the screen and see whether the button ever turns from yellow to orange. It does, when we tap in the right bottom corner of the screen. So, the touch screen is rotated by 180 degrees.

The Qt documentation page Qt for Embedded Linux comes to our rescue. The sections about linuxfb and evdev are relevant for us. In the section “Input on eglfs and linuxfb”, we find the sentence: On some touch screens the coordinates will need to be rotated. This can be enabled by setting QT_QPA_EVDEV_TOUCHSCREEN_PARAMETERS to rotate=180.

Terminate the HelloWorld app and then start it again with the touch screen rotated by 180 degrees.

imx35$ killall HelloWorld
imx35$ cd /opt
imx35$ export QT_QPA_EVDEV_TOUCHSCREEN_PARAMETERS="rotate=180"
imx35$ ./HelloWorld &

This time the “Hello, A3” button toggles nicely between yellow and orange when tapped. The touch problem is solved.

Time to look into the “broken” keys. The section “Keyboard” of Qt for Embedded Linux helps us out this time. We must tell Qt, from which input device files it gets the keyboard events. The directory /dev/input offers the following device files.

imx35$ ll /dev/input
drwxr-xr-x    2 root     root             0 Jan  2 07:59 by-path
lrwxrwxrwx    1 root     root             6 Jan  2 07:59 encoder0 -> event1
crw-r-----    1 root     root       13,  64 Jan  2 07:59 event0
crw-r-----    1 root     root       13,  65 Jan  2 07:59 event1
crw-r-----    1 root     root       13,  66 Jan  2 07:59 event2
lrwxrwxrwx    1 root     root             6 Jan  2 07:59 keyboard0 -> event2
lrwxrwxrwx    1 root     root             6 Jan  2 07:59 ts0 -> event0

The input events from the function keys come from /dev/input/keyboard0 and those from the rotary knob come from /dev/input/encoder0. We add these two device filenames to the environment variable QT_QPA_EVDEV_KEYBOARD_PARAMETERS and run the app again.

imx35$ killall HelloWorld
imx35$ cd /opt
imx35$ export QT_QPA_EVDEV_KEYBOARD_PARAMETERS="/dev/input/encoder0:/dev/input/keyboard0"
imx35$ export QT_QPA_EVDEV_TOUCHSCREEN_PARAMETERS="rotate=180"
imx35$ ./HelloWorld &

Pressing the F1 key toggles the colour of the “Hello, A3” button. Pressing the other keys or rotating the rotary knob prints the key code to the terminal. The key codes are mapped to symbolic names in the enum Qt::Key. For example, 16777264 or 0x1000030 in hex is the key code for Qt::Key_F1.

We are done!!! Our HelloWorld runs on the OPUS A3. Touch, keyboard and encoder input work. This is all we need to build more complex QML applications like an AM/FM radio, a music or video player or the control terminal of harvesters, tractors, excavators or cranes.

Downloads

  • linux-imx35-g++ – Make spec for the i.MX35. Unpack ZIP archive in directory ~/Qt/qt5/qtbase/mkspecs/devices.
  • HelloWorld – Project of HelloWorld app. Unpack ZIP archive in directory of your choice. Open project file /path/to/HelloWorld/HelloWorld.pro into QtCreator set up for i.MX35.

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