Provide build instructions for Windows and macOS

[ghost]

Is it possible to build it and if yes, would you kindly provide a tutorial?

[ivan]

Good question. The original qolibri did work on both, and I doubt the new commits have broken much, if anything. But unfortunately I will be unable to investigate this any time soon. Contributed build steps for either platform would be greatly appreciated. Because it is a Qt5 app, on Windows some of the steps might resemble the qBittorrent build.

[ivan]

@mvf since you have a working Windows build, could you please add it to the 2.1.0 release? Once you accept to be a collaborator, you can hit Edit on 2.1.0 on https://github.com/ludios/qolibri/releases. I don't particularly care if it's a .zip file with DLLs or a self-contained .exe at this point, anything is a lot better than nothing for the Japanese learners on Windows.

[mvf]

@ivan Thanks for the invite, I'll look into it when I get home.

[mvf]

I have added an archive with shared Windows binaries to the 2.1.0 release (64-bits only for now, 32-bits should follow soon™). I would have preferred a static build, but that doesn't seem feasible in this case:

• Qt WebEngine uses a separate QtWebEngineProcess.exe, which also links against Qt
• The largest chunk is Qt5WebEngineCore.dll at ~70MiB, and static linking won't downsize that too much
• Qt doesn't ship static libs, so we'd have to build Qt (and Chromium) ourselves :hurtrealbad:
• Deploying the shared version is directly supported by Qt and there might be unforeseen issues with a custom static version

[ivan]

Awesome, thanks. The build is working fine on my Windows 10 1803. I added a link from the README.

[mvf]

I'm afraid 32-bit Windows builds will have to wait. There is no pre-built 32-bit Qt WebEngine and building it looks just painful. Official 32-bit builds are planned again for 5.12: QTBUG-63708.

[PendragonLore]

I don't know how useful this can be since I'm not even sure this is fully correct, but here are the steps I took to compile qolibri on macOS High Sierra, assuming make has already been installed:

• git clone https://github.com/mistydemeo/eb.git (I tried the one from https://github.com/aehlke/eb first, but booklist.h was missing) and cd into it
• compile and install it with ./configure + make + sudo make install
• brew install qt cmake
• git clone this repository, and cd into it
• compile and install with cmake -DCMAKE_BUILD_TYPE=Release . + make + sudo make install

[p2501mk]

Dumb question maybe, but would a compile be working on an m1 Mac? Has anyone tried this?

[mvf]

I have cross-compiled for Apple Silicon but haven't actually run the app on an M1 Mac yet (still on Intel waiting for the M2 Mini :wink:).

qolibri HEAD should build on M1 using the steps above. Just make sure Brew installs Qt >=6.2 (seems to be at 6.3.1 ATM, so should be fine).

[p2501mk]

Thank you for replying! I'm trying to decide between a powerful Chromebook and a Macbook Air M1 for Japanese studies, and Qolibri is one item on my pro/con list.. -_-;;

[mvf]

I see, tough choice! :sweat_smile:

From a qolibri PoV you should be good either way: 2.1.4 should already run on M1 Macs via Rosetta. Future releases will support M1 natively (universal binary). ChromeOS should be able to run the Linux version via Crostini.

[p2501mk]

Tough choice indeed :) I'm leaning M1 for silence. And yea Rosetta is nice and all, but I'd prefer native software..