FAQ - v0.1.b8, 23-FEB-2007


Questions

1. Build and installation issues

Q1.1: QMC2 needs Qt 4, but my (Linux) distribution only comes with Qt 3. What should I do about that?

Q1.2: Aren't there any binary packages on the net?

2. Tips & tricks

Q2.1: When the gamelist reloads, the insertion of games is fairly slow. Is there a way to somehow speed it up?


Answers

Q1.1: QMC2 needs Qt 4, but my (Linux) distribution only comes with Qt 3. What should I do about that?

First of all, don't worry. Regardless if Qt 4 is already installed or not, Qt 3 and Qt 4 (as any versions of Qt) can be used in parallel. You only need to take care of some environment variables as described in the build instructions of readme.html.

If you need to build Qt 4 from source, please follow these steps:

1) Download the latest source archive of Qt 4.2.x from Trolltech's FTP server (ftp://ftp.trolltech.com/qt/source/), for example qt-x11-opensource-src-4.2.2.tar.gz.

2) Extract this tar-ball to a directory where you are going to build it, then configure and build it completely:

# mkdir -p src && cd src
# gzcat /tmp/qt-x11-opensource-src-4.2.2.tar.gz | tar xfv -
# cd qt-x11-opensource-src-4.2.2
# ./configure -platform linux-g++ -prefix /usr/local/lib/qt4
# make

Exchange the values for -platform and -prefix with things that fit your needs (the example is for a 32-bit Linux distribution)!

3) Install the library (it will be installed to the prefix-directory specified on the configure command line!):

# make install

This is VERY important for Qt 4 (whereas in case of Qt 3 this wasn't neccessary)!

Now, following the instructions of readme.html, you are able to build and use QMC2!!


Q1.2: Aren't there any binary packages on the net?

Binary packages for the Fedora Core project are available at:

Packages for other distributions are not yet available (at least not to our knowledge).


Q2.1: When the gamelist reloads, the insertion of games is fairly slow. Is there a way to somehow speed it up?

The short answer is yes. But first of all you need to understand that the most time-consuming part of it is the insertion in the tree-widget itself (so the reason is GUI updates, not the internal management of the data).

There are several ways to speed this up. The easiest and most effective is to hide the gamelist while reload is active (simply click on the Search tab for example and you'll get a tremendous speed-up).

The second thing to check is if you are sorting the gamelist while reload is active (see Frontend / Gamelist option Sort online); if so, disable it.

And last but not least - on the same configuration-page - there is an option called Responsiveness which lets you decide after how many game-insertions an update to the gamelist(-widget) is made (this setting is relevant for the reload of the entire gamelist and for pixmap updates caused by the preview-check). However, you will have to play with it (and get used to it).