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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

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

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

then execute the following:

qmake
make

Alternatively, install Qt Creator and open the bitcoin-qt.pro file. An executable named bitcoin-qt will be built.

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
    
  • Execute the following commands in a terminal to get the dependencies using HomeBrew:

      brew update
      brew install boost miniupnpc openssl berkeley-db4
    
  • If using HomeBrew, edit bitcoin-qt.pro to account for library location differences. There's a diff in contrib/homebrew/bitcoin-qt-pro.patch that shows what you need to change, or you can just patch by doing

      patch -p1 < contrib/homebrew/bitcoin.qt.pro.patch
    
  • Open the bitcoin-qt.pro file in Qt Creator and build as normal (cmd+B)

Build Configuration Options

UPnP port forwarding

To use UPnP for port forwarding behind a NAT router (recommended, as more connections overall allow for a faster and more stable bitcoin experience), pass the following argument to qmake:

qmake "USE_UPNP=1"

(in Qt Creator, you can find the setting for additional qmake arguments under "Projects" -> "Build Settings" -> "Build Steps", then click "Details" next to qmake)

This requires miniupnpc for UPnP port mapping. It can be downloaded from here. UPnP support is not compiled in by default.

Set USE_UPNP to a different value to control this:

USE_UPNP=-	no UPnP support, miniupnpc not required;                                 
USE_UPNP=0  (the default) built with UPnP, support turned off by default at runtime; 
USE_UPNP=1  build with UPnP support turned on by default at runtime.                 

Notification support for recent (k)ubuntu versions

To see desktop notifications on (k)ubuntu versions starting from 10.04, enable usage of the FreeDesktop notification interface through DBUS using the following qmake option:

qmake "USE_DBUS=1"

Generation of QR codes

libqrencode may be used to generate QRCode images for payment requests. Pass the USE_QRCODE flag to qmake to control this:

USE_QRCODE=0 	(the default) No QRCode support - libarcode not required                 
USE_QRCODE=1 	QRCode support enabled                                                   

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