QTDIR not set question

[charliee1151]

Hello
New guy here, thanks for accepting me.

Finally, after MUCH trial and error, I have the Dolphin Emulator compiling on VS2019 on win10...almost.

(As an FYI, the first compile attempt resulted in over 2000 listed errors!)

Anyway, I am down to one (YAY)

I am getting the ubiquitous "QTDIR not set..." message.

From previous excursions through the forum, and a dive into the Dolphin code,  I finally realized that the Dolphin, Externals, Qt, directory was totally empty.

So, first, I downloaded/installed GIT.  Then tried the suggestions given in other posts to download the Git from command line; I got the error that it was not a valid Git repository.  

So, to populate the appropriate directory, I went into GIT and manually downloaded the zip file (the one that says it is a smaller, Dolphin specific Qt), then extracted it to the Qt directory.

The directory tree is
...Externals
......Qt
......Qt5.4.0
.........5.4
............msvc2013_64_opengl,
followed by the four sub-dirs "bin", "include", "lib" and "plugings"

Again, this is a manual install.  

Then, in order to get the QTDIR to be set, I went into my Environmental Variables, and set it.  In both User Variables AND System Variables, I have it set to Dolphins Qt directory.  Should it be pointed someplace else, like the "Qt5.4.0" directory?  Is this even the correct approach?

Still getting the "QTDIR not set..." error.

Therefore, I'm guessing that the Environmental Variables in NOT the way to go.

So, how do I tell Dolphin that its' own QTDIR does exist, and where it is.?  Do I need to tell GIT that the Dolphin Qt directory IS a valid repository?  How?
Am I even on the correct path for resolving this?  (Also, I note that, someplace, the suggestion was made to uncheck the Dolphin QT option in the configuration window.  Note that that option does not exist in my version...there IS a DolphinNoGUI option, but that was already unchecked by default)

Thanks.  I'm really excited to see this work.  I can only imagine the manpower that got you this far.  My hat is off to you all.

Charlie

[charliee1151]

Some updates:

After some more digging, I discovered that one of the ".props" files was looking for QT 5.14 and of course in a specific path.  As I have indicated, I had installed the mini-qt 5.04.  Not only is the version different, but the directory tree is different also.  So, I just created a new directory tree to match the .props file, and moved the 5.04 stuff into it.  Will this actually work?  Don't know but as you all know, the first step in debugging is to get compiling.

Success!  I now have gotten past that compiling error.

But Murphy is not to be denied.  I now have a "file not found" error a bit further down that same .props file.  Digging in, I find that...guess what....the file actually is not there.

Looks like more fun ahead.

Thanks
Charlie

[LPFaint99]

I haven't build dolphin from source in a while, but instead of downloading a zip file, just follow the steps here

https://github.com/dolphin-emu/dolphin/wiki/Building-for-Windows

seems like you missed step two of cloning the repo
https://github.com/dolphin-emu/dolphin/wiki/Building-for-Windows#prerequisites

`git submodule update --init --recursive`

which should populate the Externals/Qt directory with the QT submodule

[charliee1151]

Thanks for your response.  My reply: "Yes...and No".  (More after the update.)

Update:
Found the issue with the missing files.  It seems that the file "QtCompile.props" is looking for Qt stuff in two different places.  The first dozen or so lines looks for the path like this: "...Externals\Qt\Qt5.14.1\msvc2019_64\".  But, further down, somewhere near line 70, there is the line "Exec Command=...", which looks for the path "...Externals/Qt".  So I had to put the Qt stuff in both places.

Compile and...success!  I see dozens (and Dozens and DOZENS) of object files being created!

But still, Murphy, you know...

I get to DolphinQT...which is a disaster.  300+ errors.  So I now need to decide if I can completely remove that (or maybe just comment out all the function bodies), or fix it.  I DO note that someplace there was a post that said DolphinQT was not needed, so maybe removal is possible.  But I also just noted that there was a recent update to Dolphin which involved....yup, you guessed it, DolphinQT.  So that is another possible option.  

More digging ahead.

Reply:
(The "Yes" part)  I was aware of the expectation to get the QT population code from Git.
(The "No" part)  But as I indicated, I don't have GIT installed. I believe that the installation is a prerequisite to running the Git command, as the error message I indicated, "...not a valid Git repository.." seems to support that.  So, I run over to the Git website, and come away with the impression that there is a cost involved.   Am I incorrect in that?  Thus I manually grabbed the code from Git, rather than "installing" it via the command line.

Off to the races...

Thanks all,
Charlie

[JosJuice]

(07-23-2020, 10:06 PM)charliee1151 Wrote: So, I run over to the Git website, and come away with the impression that there is a cost involved.   Am I incorrect in that?

No, git is free to download and use.

[AnyOldName3]

To make sure you've not gone to a dodgy site trying to scam you (that seems the most likely way for you to have got the impression you needed to give someone money), I'm linking the real Git for Windows website. The big Download button gives you the installer right away: https://gitforwindows.org/

[charliee1151]

".... I'm linking the real Git for Windows website..."
Definitely NOT where I was before.  This will certainly be a help to others as well.  Thanks

Update:
Manually edited the ".sln" file to remove the reference to DolphinQt.  I now get a full compile.  This is a major milestone.

But...that reference is the first project in the list, which VS would normally accept as the startup project.  So now VS thinks the startup project is something else, and the compile-result doesn't run.

But, hey, that's good news to me.  It means I can concentrate on that area only.  Maybe I'm closer than I think.


And I'll download the correct GIT.

Thanks all

Charlie

[LPFaint99]

(07-23-2020, 10:06 PM)charliee1151 Wrote: , "...not a valid Git repository.."

 This message indicates you tried to run a git command from a directory that wasn't a git repository. 

The presence of this message means you already have git installed. AnyOldName3 provided a link also, but if you read the wiki page i linked, it has a link to the git installer for windows.

apologies for the verboseness of these instructions, but I thought I'd be more thorough than before so starting from the beginning.

clone dolphin by running 

Code:

git clone --recursive https://github.com/dolphin-emu/dolphin.git

the output will look something like 

Quote:Cloning into 'dolphin'... remote: Enumerating objects: 9, done. remote: Counting objects: 100% (9/9), done. remote: Compressing objects: 100% (5/5), done. remote: Total 358595 (delta 5), reused 4 (delta 4), pack-reused 358586 Receiving objects: 100% (358595/358595), 349.90 MiB | 13.58 MiB/s, done. Resolving deltas: 100% (284337/284337), done. Checking out files: 100% (6259/6259), done. Submodule 'Externals/Qt' (https://github.com/dolphin-emu/ext-win-qt.git) registered for path 'Externals/Qt' Cloning into 'C:/Users/me/Desktop/dolphin/Externals/Qt'... remote: Enumerating objects: 3754, done. remote: Counting objects: 100% (3754/3754), done. remote: Compressing objects: 100% (2095/2095), done. remote: Total 3754 (delta 1404), reused 2569 (delta 983), pack-reused 0 Receiving objects: 100% (3754/3754), 111.22 MiB | 11.35 MiB/s, done. Resolving deltas: 100% (1404/1404), done. Submodule path 'Externals/Qt': checked out 'a14e340be1ad66e0cb1d8180485896a9134800e0'

at this point open the Source/dolphin-emu.sln from the checked out repository
Choose your build target (release/x64) and build. (I'm waiting for it to compile as I type, but that's it, like 3 steps)


If you really want to do things without git, (and please ask for help with git if that's the issue) .
Why are you trying to replace QT 5.14.1 with QT5.4.0? 
at the very least you should match the version of the QT repo with the version of the dolphin repo you are trying to build. Changing QT versions is going to require code/buildconfiguration changes, and even if that is your goal, compiling an unmodified revision should be your first goal

TLDR;
 git clone --recursive https://github.com/dolphin-emu/dolphin.git
open in VS2019
click run

[charliee1151]

Response:
Thanks for the detailed info.  You actually answered one of my questions, which was "where do I run the GIT command".  I was opening the CMD window from Windows start, and using whatever that default directory was.  Since that didn't work, I was assuming that one possible reason is that I was in the wrong directory.  Not having any knowledge of GIT, I didn't want to have to take on the burden of learning something new while I was in the middle of Dolphin.  But this seems reasonably easy given your explanations.

I'm not actually trying to run WITHOUT Git, I just wanted to be concentrated on Dolphin.  Also, I originally used QT 5.4 simply because the Git source indicated it was a condensed version of the data Git would have provided, and so I took that short-cut to get me past the hurdle at that time.  Presently, I'm using QT 5.14.

Update: (Note: I don't want to belabor this and fill the forum with "fluff", so let me know if I'm going overboard)
Once I re-enabled the DolphinQT project, I compiled with some 300 errors.  After commenting-out all the stuff that didn't work, it, well...worked; it compiled fine.  (DUH).  But Mr. Murphy was not ready to give up.  I now get Linker errors, based on compiler/linker version.  Apparently, there is some issue with __MSC_VER compatibility; 1800 vs 1900.  Accessing my friend Google, I learn a few things:
1. 1800 is VS2013
2. 1900 is VS2015
3. VS2019, which I am using, is 1926.

So now I need to investigate what/how/where __MSC_VER is set/used.  I see a lot of "If" stuff based on those numbers that I need to study.  

As for fixing those items I commented-out....well, as I said there are over 300 of them.  But that does not mean that 300 fixes are required.  As an example, many places call QMenu with three parameters, but the QMenu function (constructor?) appears to accept only two.  So, it would appear that a simple fix to the QMenu function would resolve all those calls....but I have no idea how C++ works, so I had to comment-out all those many, many dozens of calls.  Once I learn the parameters of the QMenu call and how the constructor works, I can try to fix the function itself, and thus un-comment all those calls at once.  (Hey, what ever happened to good old VB6???)

So, following that thinking and realizing that there were many Beta and Development versions of the code, I was going to investigate them to look for which ones had source code, to see if/how the QMenu function issue was resolved.  Hopefully I will find a number of fixes that I need.


Now, however, there may be an easier way = learn via a working example!  Thanks again for that info.

Charlie

EDIT: Using CMD window from my targeted directory, the GIT stuff downloaded just fine. However, when I compile, I get almost exactly the same errors as my original/manual attempt. In this case, over 400 of them. Still, I am going to investigate those functions in my original code that had errors, to see if this latest stuff resolves any of them.
Thanks
Charlie

[LPFaint99]

can you provide a sampling of the different errrors?

In an attempt to reproduce, I upgraded to the latest MSVC++ build tools, and was able to get the build to break. In v14.26 /std:c++latest drops some deprecated c++17 things that are used in QT
for  example

`Error C2039 'result_of': is not a member of 'std'`

using an older version with the latest visual studio is nontrivial, so i'll only add the steps if that is the issue you are having