CuteHMI is an open-source HMI (Human Machine Interface) software written in C++ and QML, using Qt libraries as a framework.
Note: While most of the project uses GNU Lesser General Public License version 3, some files are distributed under different licenses.
Branch "master" is a development branch. Development branch may contain source code that is undergoing deep changes, rendering it unusable. Consecutive branch numbers denote successive iterations of the project. Iteration of the project is related to build framework (repository layout and Qbs items). Extensions and tools are versioned independently and they have their own development status. Hence "perpetual beta" is desired development status of each branch.
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Get the Qt toolkit. Open-source and commercial editions can be obtained from https://www.qt.io/. Qt can also be shipped with Linux distribution.
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Open
CuteHMI.qbs
file with QtCreator and simply build it. -
All extensions dependent on external libraries will be disabled, if these libraries could not be found. To make the process of finding the libraries and installing them under Windows easier, a set of Makefiles is provided, which allows the libraries to be build from sources. Check out external libraries for more details. Each extension may provide individual documentation on how to build it.
Remember that Qbs caches Probe
items' results, so if the library is installed after the project has been
configured with Qbs, it will not show up. You can use --force-probe-execution
option to force Qbs to not use cached results.
For an introduction you may want to run one of the existing examples. In CuteHMI
everything is either a tool or an extension, therefore examples are also provided
as extensions. Their names follow "CuteHMI.Examples.*" pattern. The most basic
example CuteHMI.Examples.SimpleView.0
can be run with cutehmi.view.2
tool by
issuing following command.
cutehmi.view.2 --extension="CuteHMI.Examples.SimpleView.0"
To create your own extension you can simply copy one of the examples to your own
subdirectory in extensions
directory (e.g. Me/MyExtension.0
), rename qbs
file
accordingly to match extension name (MyExtension.0.qbs
), then edit qbs
file
and change name
property to match extension name (name: "Me.MyExtension.0"
)
After that you can use --force-probe-execution
Qbs option or delete build
directory and rebuild whole project. Your extension should be installed and it
can be run with cutehmi.view.2
tool.
cutehmi.view.2 --extension="Me.MyExtension.0"
Examples are listed in the documentation along with other extensions.
Directory structure of the project is organized as follows.
- _sass, _layouts - directories used by GitHub Pages.
- awkgward - code maintanance scripts (don't bother).
- dev - development notes (irrelevant).
- doc - a place where documentation shall be.
- extensions - libraries and QML extensions.
- external - directory containing "external" libraries.
- extra - various stuff related to the project, such as T-shirts.
- qbs - Qbs modules and imports.
- tools - executable programs.
Two most important directories are extensions and tools. Extensions combine functionality of QML extensions and standard libraries. They can be utilized by end-user applications, but they can be also linked with each other. Some extensions may depend on external libraries.