How to build a package for my QML app?

Question

I want to build a package for my app, written with C++ and QML. For this I'm using Ubuntu SDK. I'm working on Ubuntu 15.04. Here is the project tree :

Player :

• player.qmlproject
• components (a dir containing a bunch of qml files)
• imports-->Models : libPlayerModules.so, plugins.qmltypes, qmldir
• pages (an empty dir for now)
• test (a dir generated by the SDK)
• Makefile (a dir generated by the SDK)
• Player.desktop (contains a qmlscene call with the imports argument)
• Player.png (app's icon, included in the .desktop file)
• Player.qml (the main qml file)

Some info about the libPlayerModules.so in case it would be needed: I'm writing this lib using C++11, it depends on Qt 5.4, sqlite3 (used through QtSQL), taglib, D-Bus. I can run the app without any trouble using qmlscene.

Answer 1

You didn't specify what type of package you wish to build. I'm going to assume that you want to build a click package, suitable for installation on an Ubuntu phone.

If you're using Qt Creator with the Ubuntu SDK plugin, there is a "Publish" tab on the the left-hand side. Select that, and then click the "Build and validate click package" button. The click package will be placed in your build directory.

To build a click package from the command line, first place all the files into the correct (relative) hierarchy in a temporary directory. The manifest.json file must be in this directory. Keep in mind that any architecture-dependent files must have been generated in an appropriate chroot. You probably want your make install step to set this up for you. Then run click build /path/to/temp/directory, and you'll get the click package, named with the appropriate values from the manifest file.

Click packages are very similar to deb files. You can inspect their contents with file-roller, but only if you rename them to end in .deb.

For more details about building click packages, including some helpful commands for building in chroots, see this blog post.