Build DBus for Windows

On Windows, the default Qt installation includes QtDBus, but not the DBus library that it depends on. Here are Windows binaries for DBus, they should be extracted directly into the Qt installation tree:

  • Verbose-mode builds (insecure, for swift developers)

    • F12375 DBus 1.10.24 for MSVC2017 32-bit
    • F12376 DBus 1.10.24 for MSVC2017 64-bit
    • F12377 DBus 1.10.24 for MinGW 5.3.0 32-bit

  • Secure-mode builds (for deployment to swift users)

    • F12378 DBus 1.10.24 for MSVC2017 32-bit
    • F12379 DBus 1.10.24 for MSVC2017 64-bit
    • F12380 DBus 1.10.24 for MinGW 5.3.0 32-bit

Building from source

  • Download and install CMake.

  • Download and extract the libexpat and libdbus source code.

    • At the time of writing, both the latest stable release and the [master]{.title-ref} branch of libexpat fail to build on Windows, so we fall back to the previous stable version (2.1.1).
    • MinGW binaries of libexpat are already part of the default MinGW itself.

Visual Studio Command Prompt: .. code-block:

cmake -G "Visual Studio 15 2017" -DCMAKE_INSTALL_PREFIX=C:\expat-msvc32 C:\expat-sources
msbuild install.vcxproj /p:Configuration=Release

cmake -G "Visual Studio 15 2017 Win64" -DCMAKE_INSTALL_PREFIX=C:\expat-msvc64 C:\expat-sources
msbuild install.vcxproj /p:Configuration=Release

cmake -G "Visual Studio 15 2017" -DCMAKE_INSTALL_PREFIX=C:\dbus-msvc32
    -DEXPAT_INCLUDE_DIR=C:\expat-msvc32\include
    -DEXPAT_LIBRARY=C:\expat-msvc32\lib\expat.lib C:\dbus-sources\cmake
msbuild install.vcxproj /p:Configuration=Release

cmake -G "Visual Studio 15 2017 Win64" -DCMAKE_INSTALL_PREFIX=C:\dbus-msvc64
    -DEXPAT_INCLUDE_DIR=C:\expat-msvc64\include
    -DEXPAT_LIBRARY=C:\expat-msvc64\lib\expat.lib C:\dbus-sources\cmake
msbuild install.vcxproj /p:Configuration=Release

MinGW Command Prompt:

cmake -G "MinGW Makefiles" -DCMAKE_INSTALL_PREFIX=C:\dbus-mingw32 C:\dbus-sources\cmake
mingw32-make install

Verbose vs. secure builds

::: {.warning} ::: {.title} Warning :::

The default DBus CMake build includes unit tests, asserts, and verbose mode, which help with debugging but render the library insecure. To build secure binaries appropriate for deployment to end-users, use these [cmake]{.title-ref} arguments: :::

-DDBUS_BUILD_TESTS=OFF -DDBUS_DISABLE_ASSERT=ON -DDBUS_ENABLE_VERBOSE_MODE=OFF

Error messages

Some error messages you see when the libdbus libs are missing (also posted here so you can search by the terms)

Cannot find libdbus-1 in your system to resolve symbol 'dbus_get_local_machine_id'.
Debug Error!

Program: P:\Qt\5.9.2\msvc2015\bin\Qt5Cored.dll
Module: 5.9.2
File: qdbus_symbols.cpp
Line: 142
Last modified 28.06.2020: Add content (0e00ae5)