* Package name : qt-android-6.2 Version : 6.2.2 Upstream Author : Qt Company * URL : https://www.qt.io/ * License : Mixed: Apache-2.0, public-domain, GPL-2+ or FTL, LGPL-3 or GPL-2, brg-endian, MPL-1.1 and GPL-2+ and LGPL-2.1, LGPL-2.1-or-3 with Qt-1.1 exception, W3C, BSD-3-Clause, CC0-1.0, GPL-2+, BSD-2-Clause, LGPL-2+, GPL-3.0+ with Bison-exception-2.2 exception, ICC, Hybrid-BSD, Unlicense, NTP, Apache-2.0 or Expat, MPL-2.0 or GPL-2+ or LGPL-2.1+, BSD-3-clause, Expat or Unlicense, libjpeg and BSD-3-clause and Zlib, MIT, GPL-3 with Qt-1.0 exception, Harfbuzz, LGPL-3 or GPL-2+, BSD-2-clause, OpenGroup-BSD-like, GFDL-NIV-1.3, Bitstream, Zlib, Expat, GPL-3, BSL-1.0, libpng, Unicode, ISC Description : Qt for Android enables you to run Qt applications on Android devices Related to https://bugs.debian.org/cgi-bin/bugreport.cgi?bug=921545 This package permits Android developers to build Android apps based on the Qt Framework. This could also be useful to F-Droid that packages android apps, among which some are based on Qt. F-Droid runs Debian. Concerning the usage in F-Droid, some discussion here: - https://forum.f-droid.org/t/packaging-qt-apps/14764/15 - https://gitlab.com/fdroid/fdroiddata/-/merge_requests/9667 This is similar to the Qt for desktop packages but usage is not the same as the binaries/libraries this package produced are built for Android platforms. It depdends on the Android NDK & SDK and requires them to be installed. more info on required versions here: https://salsa.debian.org/bastif/qt-android I also sent messages to pkg-kde-talk mailing list: [4] There have been some exchanges in this thread too: [2] It would be great if that could be merged into qt/kde salsa team and/or android team and team-maintained so that it doesn't rely only on 1 person. Once qt-android-6.2 is in, on my salsa repo there are packages ready for 5.15.2, 5.12.11 & 5.11.3 so that it fits all needs of android app developers & f-droid. Reasons for the need of all these versions if in the urls above. The source file can't be duplicate to dfsg Qt source code as shipped by Debian because these sources have been stripped down and some files/libraries that are needed for the qt for android "variant" are missing. That's the case for 'sqlite' as well as for 'freetype' and 'libpng' if i remember well. These libraries used by Qt for android are not shipped in android NDK, so we have to build with their source shipped in the qt sources. hence the need of a distinct source file. You can follow a beginning of discussion on qt for android in [2]. Having a distinct source archive seemed to be the prefered option. See also this rfs: https://bugs.debian.org/cgi-bin/bugreport.cgi?bug=1001759 This package (in its version 5.15.2) is used to build welle.io app in github's continuous integration. It uses the deb packages produced by the salsa-ci pipeline (aptly job). There have been some doubt about the size of the copyright file. Here are a few things I would like to mention: - Most of the d/copyright file is produced by the same script as the one in qt6-base [1]. For the rest, some has also been borrowed and adapted from the various debian packages for qt modules. - From line 124 to 9249 the list is auto-generated by the script - From line 9999 to the end, it is just license text - So there are roughly 900 "manual/additional" lines in d/copyright that have been double checked with debmake -k. - In the copyright file (also attached) some 3rd party sources are already in Files-Excluded. - The package is for contrib section (at least for now) because it depends on packages that are not shipped on debian, and it can depend on "google-android- installers" in contrib. I will amend Build-Depends once google-android- installers [3] is accepted. For now you have to install google android's NDK & SDK manually (and +/- build with DEB_BUILD_OPTIONS, see README.source for more details). [1] <https://salsa.debian.org/qt-kde-team/qt6/qt6-base/-/blob/master/debian/ scripts/update-copyright> [2] https://alioth-lists.debian.net/pipermail/pkg-kde-talk/2021-september/ 003288.html [3] https://mentors.debian.net/package/google-android-installers/ [4] https://alioth-lists.debian.net/pipermail/pkg-kde-talk/2021-september/ 003285.html Regards
Done, see https://bugs.debian.org/cgi-bin/bugreport.cgi?bug=1002004 Thank you.
The packages for qt-android-N.M are almost ready and directly usable. The source package can be found on salsa [1] and the binary packages as well. They are also available on Launchpad PPA [1] from Qt version 5.15 until 6.9.1. The use cases and challenges of qt-android-N.M packages have been mentioned during a dedicated talk at Debconf25 [3]. The slides and transcription of the talk are downloadable at [4] [5] [6] [7]. I don't have interest anymore in maintaining Qt for Android thus I will stop updating and maintaining it. However I would assist anyone willing to continue my work and to take the challenge to finally make it enter the Debian archive. By the way, given that qt-android depends on binary packages of src:google-android-installers it would make sense that the maintaier of qt-android also maintains it. Indeed, the latest upstream versions of qt-android usually depend on the latest versions of Android SDK/NDK. See corresponding RFA (#1109636) [8]. src:google-android-installers is pretty easy to maintain. [1] https://salsa.debian.org/bastif/qt-android/ [2] https://launchpad.net/~bastif/+archive/ubuntu/qt-android [3] https://debconf25.debconf.org/talks/111-packaging-qt-for-android/ [4] https://salsa.debian.org/debconf-team/public/share/debconf25/-/raw/main/slides/111-packaging-qt-for-android/Qt_for_Android_slides.odp [5] https://salsa.debian.org/debconf-team/public/share/debconf25/-/raw/main/slides/111-packaging-qt-for-android/Qt_for_Android_slides.pdf [6] https://salsa.debian.org/debconf-team/public/share/debconf25/-/raw/main/slides/111-packaging-qt-for-android/Qt_for_Android_transcription.odt [7] https://salsa.debian.org/debconf-team/public/share/debconf25/-/raw/main/slides/111-packaging-qt-for-android/Qt_for_Android_transcription.pdf [8] https://bugs.debian.org/cgi-bin/bugreport.cgi?bug=1109636
Thanks for giving it, Fab! I'll reply now -- I've got my notebook open and here are some notes I had from the session; happy to talk it over further with the team but here's a 'first pass' anyway. I think there's nothing inherently wrong with the package's aim. There's nothing, on principle, that would stop this from being included in the non-free section of the archive. I did pick up on a few things that I think need to be addressed before uploading it to the archive: One of the first things that jumped out was the way in which this package builds. IIRC, the android ndk (due to being out of date in Debian[1]) was downloaded at build-time. All builds (even nonfree!) should be building without network. For main and contrib this would be a hard reject. I think we'd apply the same standard for non-free. If the NDK can't be updated (or this be changed) due to distributibility issues, that's also something that would need fixing :) The next was social in nature -- this feels like something that should be done with, at minimum, the consent of the Qt team. Having two different Qt packages in the archive is one thing (I'm sure someone will have heartburn over that), but having them configured differently has a potential for causing some real hard confusion for everyone involved :). I understand (and am sympathetic!) that the Qt team doesn't want to maintain this -- I think that just means whoever does maintain this package ought to jump in to get involved with the Qt team in Debian, and ensure that Qt team norms apply to this package too, even if the android Qt varient isn't a team package. I'm sure the Security team would have some thoughts which may be helpful to solicit and consider, but I also don't think they care too much about non-free; they have their hands full with main. Lastly, I think the final big flag was "It needs a maintainer" :) -- I heard you mention you were finishing this enough to "scratch your itch" with welle, but to include this in the archive, we'd need a willing and active maintainer to take on this truely massive maintance burden. After all, the Qt package, as prepared, has more build components (including full forked Chromium!) than the version in main, and this package, plus an ecosystem of dependent packages would fall onto this one person. We'd likely need to carry most if not all of the Debian Qt patches against Qt in this package too, after all. It may be worth trying to do this after there's a team of folks who have experience with the Debian Qt team -- so they understand conventions, norms, and tools related to Qt packaging, even if, again, this isn't part of the Qt team. Thanks for your work, it was an interesting talk! paultag [1]: Someone should really file a RoM or RoQA on that package
Le lundi 28 juillet 2025, 16:37:15 CEST Paul Tagliamonte a écrit : From what I understood, non-free packages are usually not built by the Debian infrastructure unless we use "XS-Autobuild: yes" in d/control. So I though that usually, for non-free packages, the maintainer uploads both the source and binary packages. So the "building without network" would not be an issue. [...] Actually the NDK is not in the archive yet. I started to work on it but it's a big package given that it depends/ships a custom llvm/clang (ie. with Android/ Google specific changes). I created an RFP at: https://bugs.debian.org/cgi-bin/bugreport.cgi?bug=1109642 Regards Fab