Building a Dynamically Linked Version

Dynamically linked builds are most useful for packaging into Linux distributions. If you are attempting to standalone version for deployment on Windows, go to the statically linked section.

Prerequisites

Latest "clean" tarball at http://unetbootin.sourceforge.net/unetbootin-source-clean-latest.tar.gz
libqt4-dev
g++

Instructions

1. Extract the tarball and cd to it

2. Run the following commands:

lupdate-qt4 unetbootin.pro
lrelease-qt4 unetbootin.pro
qmake-qt4
make

(Note that if you are instead building from git or bzr or the source .zip file, you will need to instead use the following):

sed -i '/^RESOURCES/d' unetbootin.pro
lupdate-qt4 unetbootin.pro
lrelease-qt4 unetbootin.pro
qmake-qt4 "DEFINES += NOSTATIC" "RESOURCES -= unetbootin.qrc"
make

3. A dynamically linked executable which you can package will then be generated at "unetbootin"

4. If building a package, place the unetbootin_*.qm files (which were generated from the .ts files when lrelease-qt4 was run) in the /usr/share/unetbootin/ directory to enable the usage of localization.

5. If building a package, add "syslinux", "p7zip-full", "libqt4-core" (libQtCore.so.4), "libqt4-gui" (libQtGui.so.4), and "libqt4-network" (libQtNetwork.so.4) as dependencies.

Building a Statically Linked Version

Statically linked builds are most useful for standalone deployment, not packaging. They are the type that is available for download on the website.

Build System

I build on Fedora 10 and Ubuntu 8.04 with g++ and mingw32, though it should work on other distributions as well.

Prerequisites

Latest source zip package at http://unetbootin.sourceforge.net/unetbootin-source-latest.zip
libqt4-dev
mingw32 (Fedora users see http://www.annexia.org/tmp/mingw/ for RPM packages)
g++

Instructions (Simple)

These instructions use pre-compiled versions of static Qt4 for Windows and Linux. If you'd like to build statically linked versions of Qt4 yourself, use the manual instructions instead.

1. Go to http://launchpad.net/unetbootin/+download and download these files:

If using Qt 4.5:

qt4.5-win.7z http://launchpad.net/unetbootin/trunk/trunk/+download/qt4.5-win.7z

qt4.5-win.7z http://launchpad.net/unetbootin/trunk/trunk/+download/qt4.5-x11.7z

Or if using Qt 4.4:

qt4-win.7z http://launchpad.net/unetbootin/trunk/trunk/+download/qt4-win.7z

qt4-x11-glibc23.7z http://launchpad.net/unetbootin/trunk/trunk/+download/qt4-x11-glibc23.7z

2. Extract those files using 7-zip http://www.7-zip.org/ or p7zip-full on Linux, to get the directories "qt4-win" and "qt4-x11"

3. Move the qt4-win and qt4-x11 directories into the UNetbootin build directory (the same directory containing the files unetbootin.cpp and unetbootin.pro, which is src/unetbootin in the bzr branch).

4. cd to the UNetbootin build directory, and run the script "./build"

5. Statically linked UNetbootin binaries should be generated in the release subdirectory.

Instructions (Manual)

1) Build a statically linked Qt4 for Windows (instructions from http://doc.trolltech.com/4.3/deployment-windows.html#static-linking and http://qtnode.net/wiki?title=Building_static )

cd C:\Qt4
configure -static
make sub-src

2) Set up cross-compile environment (instructions from http://gentoo-wiki.com/HOWTO_MinGW_and_Qt4 )

If cross-compiling on Ubuntu, simply copy the file qmake.conf to /usr/share/qt4/mkspecs/win32-g++/qmake.conf

3) Copy over your statically linked Windows qt4 install directory to /usr/i586-mingw32msvc/Qt/

4) Go to the directory containing the source files (unetbootin.cpp, main.cpp, unetbootin.pro, etc.), and run "./build" to automate steps 4 and 5, or to do it manually, run the following commands:

qmake -spec win32-g++ "DEFINES += STATICWINDOWS" "RESOURCES += unetbootin-windows.qrc unetbootin-sevnz.qrc" "RC_FILE += ubnembed.rc" "QMAKE_LFLAGS += -Wl,-subsystem,windows"

make

5) You should now have a Windows .exe file at release/unetbootin.exe

To reduce file size, compress the executable using upx ( http://upx.sourceforge.net/ )

./upx --lzma ./unetbootin.exe

Instructions (Microsoft Visual C++ 2005)

You can also use Microsoft Visual C++ 2005 as your compiler to reduce executable size for Windows. In that case, download and use:

qt4.5.1-static-msvc2005-release-minimal.7z http://gkovacs.xvm.mit.edu/qt4.5.1-static-msvc2005-release-minimal.7z

To build, extract the file to C:\Qt\qt4-msvc2005, cd to the unetbootin source directory, open the Visual Studio 2005 command line and enter the following commands:

set QTDIR=c:\Qt\qt4-msvc2005
set PATH=%PATH%;c:\Qt\qt4-msvc2005\bin
set QMAKESPEC=win32-msvc2005
qmake "DEFINES += STATICWINDOWS" "RESOURCES += unetbootin-windows.qrc unetbootin-sevnz.qrc" "RC_FILE += ubnembed.rc"
nmake
upx --lzma release\unetbootin.exe

For more information see Compiling Qt Projects with Microsoft Visual C++

Troubleshooting

If you run into errors while running qmake or other qt build commands, make sure you're using the qt4 version not the qt3 one by adding -qt4 to the end of the commands (qmake-qt4). You can check the version by running "qmake --version".

If you get mingw errors relating to "qatomic-windows.h" or "InterlockedCompareExchange" open the file src/corelib/arch/qatomic_windows.h find this section and add the declarations:

extern "C" {
#ifndef __INTERLOCKED_DECLARED
#define __INTERLOCKED_DECLARED
    __declspec(dllimport) long __stdcall InterlockedCompareExchange(long *, long, long);
    __declspec(dllimport) long __stdcall InterlockedIncrement(long *);
    __declspec(dllimport) long __stdcall InterlockedDecrement(long *);
    __declspec(dllimport) long __stdcall InterlockedExchange(long *, long);
    __declspec(dllimport) long __stdcall InterlockedExchangeAdd(long *, long);
#endif
}

See Also

Building a Custom UNetbootin Version
Building a UNetbootin Plugin
List of Custom UNetbootin Versions and Plugins (publicly editable)