Compilation Alpine Linux

Alpine Linux build instructions

This guide will help you install qBittorrent on Alpine Linux using a combination of packages installed using apk and dependencies built using cmake.

ℹ️ This guide should work in any Alpine arch as long as the required packages dependencies are available to install for that arch. This guide was tested on x86_64

ℹ️ This guide will install qBittorrent and dependencies using shared libraries. At the point of writing this guide the latest version of Alpine is 3.13

The majority of these commands are copy and paste but some can be modified. For example, in the libtorrent section there is a choice between libtorrent v1 or v2. Check the notes and commented commands for more information.

Check out the common information page to learn more about the available build configuration options for qBittorrent (for example, to compile qBittorrent without the GUI) and also CMake itself, if you're new to it.

Build dependencies

These are the build dependencies we need to install using apk

apk add autoconf automake build-base cmake curl git libtool linux-headers perl pkgconf python3 python3-dev re2c tar

Application dependencies

These are application dependencies we need to install using apk

ℹ️ The iconv libraries needed for libtorrent v1.2 are built into /usr/lib/libc.so so we do not need to install iconv as a dependency.

apk add icu-dev libexecinfo-dev openssl-dev qt5-qtbase-dev qt5-qttools-dev zlib-dev qt5-qtsvg-dev

Ninja build

⚠️ There is no apk version for Alpine 3.12 or greater so we need to build it. It won't take long.

git clone --shallow-submodules --recurse-submodules https://github.com/ninja-build/ninja.git ~/ninja && cd ~/ninja
git checkout "$(git tag -l --sort=-v:refname "v*" | head -n 1)"
cmake -Wno-dev -B build \
	-D CMAKE_CXX_STANDARD=17 \
	-D CMAKE_INSTALL_PREFIX="/usr/local"
cmake --build build
cmake --install build

Boost build files

ℹ️ All we need to bootstrap boost is to download and extract the files. There is nothing to build at this step.

Download and extract the boost files.

curl -sNLk https://boostorg.jfrog.io/artifactory/main/release/1.76.0/source/boost_1_76_0.tar.gz -o "$HOME/boost_1_76_0.tar.gz"
tar xf "$HOME/boost_1_76_0.tar.gz" -C "$HOME"

Libtorrent

Download and build libtorrent by checking out the RC_1_2 branch. You can also change the git checkout command filter "v1*" to "v2*" to use the latest version of a specific tag

ℹ️ Any tag can be used to checkout the version you want - https://github.com/arvidn/libtorrent/tags

git clone --shallow-submodules --recurse-submodules https://github.com/arvidn/libtorrent.git ~/libtorrent && cd ~/libtorrent
# git checkout "$(git tag -l --sort=-v:refname "v2*" | head -n 1)" # always checkout the latest release of libtorrent v2
git checkout "$(git tag -l --sort=-v:refname "v1*" | head -n 1)" # always checkout the latest release of libtorrent v1
cmake -Wno-dev -G Ninja -B build \
    -D CMAKE_BUILD_TYPE="Release" \
    -D CMAKE_CXX_STANDARD=17 \
    -D BOOST_INCLUDEDIR="$HOME/boost_1_76_0/" \
    -D CMAKE_INSTALL_LIBDIR="lib" \
    -D CMAKE_INSTALL_PREFIX="/usr/local"
cmake --build build
cmake --install build

qBittorrent

Build and install qBittorrent

ℹ️ Any tag can be used to checkout the version you want - https://github.com/qbittorrent/qBittorrent/tags

⚠️ You are most likely not using a GUI (desktop) with Alpine, so remember to pass -D GUI=OFF.

git clone --shallow-submodules --recurse-submodules https://github.com/qbittorrent/qBittorrent.git ~/qbittorrent && cd ~/qbittorrent
git checkout "$(git tag -l --sort=-v:refname | head -n 1)" # always checkout the latest release of qbittorrent
cmake -Wno-dev -G Ninja -B build \
    -D CMAKE_BUILD_TYPE="release" \
    -D CMAKE_CXX_STANDARD=17 \
    -D BOOST_INCLUDEDIR="$HOME/boost_1_76_0/" \
    -D CMAKE_CXX_STANDARD_LIBRARIES="/usr/lib/libexecinfo.so" \
    -D CMAKE_INSTALL_PREFIX="/usr/local"
cmake --build build
cmake --install build

Tidy up the downloaded build files

cd && rm -rf qbittorrent libtorrent ninja boost_1_76_0 boost_1_76_0.tar.gz

Post build

You can now run qbittorrent-no as it will be in the path (or qbittorrent, if you build with the GUI).

qbittorrent-nox