Bitcoin-Qt Readme

Contains build and configuration instructions for Bitcoin-Qt (Qt4 GUI for Bitcoin).

Build Instructions

Debian

First, make sure that the required packages for Qt4 development of your distribution are installed, these are

for Debian and Ubuntu <= 11.10 :

apt-get install qt4-qmake libqt4-dev build-essential libboost-dev libboost-system-dev \
    libboost-filesystem-dev libboost-program-options-dev libboost-thread-dev \
    libssl-dev libdb4.8++-dev libprotobuf-dev protobuf-compiler

for Ubuntu >= 12.04 (please read the 'Berkely DB version warning' below):

apt-get install qt4-qmake libqt4-dev build-essential libboost-dev libboost-system-dev \
    libboost-filesystem-dev libboost-program-options-dev libboost-thread-dev \
    libssl-dev libdb++-dev libminiupnpc-dev libprotobuf-dev protobuf-compiler

For Qt 5 you need the following, otherwise you get an error with lrelease when running qmake:

apt-get install qt5-qmake libqt5gui5 libqt5core5 libqt5dbus5 qttools5-dev-tools

Once these are installed, they will be found by configure and bitcoin-qt will be built by default.

Mac OS X

Download and install the Qt Mac OS X SDK. It is recommended to also install Apple's Xcode with UNIX tools.
Download and install either MacPorts or HomeBrew.
Execute the following commands in a terminal to get the dependencies using MacPorts
```
  sudo port selfupdate
  sudo port install boost db48 miniupnpc protobuf-cpp
```
Execute the following commands in a terminal to get the dependencies using HomeBrew:
```
  brew update
  brew install boost miniupnpc openssl berkeley-db4 protobuf
```

Build Configuration Options

UPnP port forwarding

UPnP support is compiled in when possible and turned off by default. See the configure options for upnp behavior desired:

    --with-miniupnpc         No UPnP support miniupnp not required
    --disable-upnp-default   (the default) UPnP support turned off by default at runtime
    --enable-upnp-default    UPnP support turned on by default at runtime

Notification support for recent (k)ubuntu versions

DBUS support is enabled by default if dependencies are met.

See the --with-qtdbus configure option.

Generation of QR codes

libqrencode may be used to generate QRCode images for payment requests.

QR code support is enabled by default if dependencies are met.

See the --with-qrencode configure option.

Warnings

Berkely DB Version Warning

A warning for people using the static binary version of Bitcoin on a Linux/UNIX-ish system (tl;dr: Berkely DB databases are not forward compatible).

The static binary version of Bitcoin is linked against libdb4.8 (see also this Debian issue).

Now the nasty thing is that databases from 5.X are not compatible with 4.X.

If the globally installed development package of Berkely DB installed on your system is 5.X, any source you build yourself will be linked against that. The first time you run with a 5.X version the database will be upgraded, and 4.X cannot open the new format. This means that you cannot go back to the old statically linked version without significant hassle!

Ubuntu 11.10 Warning

Ubuntu 11.10 has a package called 'qt-at-spi' installed by default. At the time of writing, having that package installed causes bitcoin-qt to crash intermittently. The issue has been reported as launchpad bug 857790, but isn't yet fixed.

Until the bug is fixed, you can remove the qt-at-spi package to work around the problem, though this will presumably disable screen reader functionality for Qt apps:

sudo apt-get remove qt-at-spi

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