For reasons™, I would like to develop my Qt code in Qt Creator running in Ubuntu (24) and debug this on my Torizon7-based mx8 module remotely, without the burden of any docker containers.
I say Ubuntu, since I presume this will be compatible - I presume a Windows system will not be supported in terms of cross-compiler and libraries.
To do this, I understand I will need to ensure that my Ubuntu system has all the required tools installed - cross-compiler, and the correctly cross-compiled Qt libraries for the correct version of Qt, and gdb debug tools.
Then I will need to have the correct libraries installed to the base system of my Torizon7 module.
Can I just apt-get these from the correct source by adding the debian/torizon source to apt-get in Ubuntu (I suppose this should not be a problem on Torizon) ?
Once I get the required libraries installed, I think I will be able set up Qt Creator with a Kit (I’ve had to do this for Yocto builds in the the past).
If anyone has any experience or pointers, please chip in !
ah - also I would need to run weston - if I ran that from the regular toradex container, would my application running outside docker be able to access it ?
Or should I install it with apt-get in the base system…
It is not possible to install Ubuntu/Debian packages using apt-get on Torizon OS, since apt-get itself is not available on our images.
We generally recommend using containers, as they simplify application development and deployment. However, if you need to run your application natively on Torizon OS, you can use the torizon-minimal, which is basically Torizon OS without Docker. If you need to customize it (for example, by adding packages), you will need to use the Yocto Project.
Regarding Weston, you can use our standard Weston container, and your application can access it. However, you will need to make some adjustments, such as mounting the required volumes into the container.
I posted the original question just in case a more experienced community member has adapted their workflow along these lines - I don’t think Toradex support should be worrying about this
It would be for debug only. One of the reasons™ is the time it takes to build and launch the debug container (even without requiring any application build time). Frankly I am not convinced that the advantages of containers outweigh their disadvantages for an embedded device. But it’s what we have to work with, for compatibility with Torizon Cloud OTA updates.
It sounds as if the way to go would be to bitbake a custom Yocto image based on torizon-minimal, including Weston and the Qt6 libraries.
I will probably not pursue this, since I can work on my core application logic in Qt Creator on Windows. To work on components that interact with the system OS, I will need to work in any case with the containers. A custom bitbaked image would not help for this.
