Installation

Requirements

  • Qt 5.15+ or Qt 6.x

  • Qt SVG module (for processing status icons)

  • CMake 3.11+

  • C++ Compiler with C++17 support (GCC 7+, Clang 5+, MSVC 2019+)

  • Catch2 (optional, for running tests)

On Ubuntu/Debian, install Qt SVG with:

# For Qt6
sudo apt install libqt6svg6

# For Qt5
sudo apt install libqt5svg5

Building from Source

1. Clone the repository

git clone https://github.com/paceholder/nodeeditor.git
cd nodeeditor

2. Create build directory and configure

mkdir build && cd build
cmake ..

3. Build

cmake --build .

CMake Options

Option

Default

Description

USE_QT6

ON

Build with Qt6. Set to OFF for Qt5.

BUILD_SHARED_LIBS

ON

Build as shared library. Set to OFF for static.

BUILD_TESTING

ON

Build unit tests. Requires Catch2.

BUILD_EXAMPLES

ON

Build example applications.

Examples:

# Build with Qt5
cmake .. -DUSE_QT6=OFF

# Build static library
cmake .. -DBUILD_SHARED_LIBS=OFF

# Skip tests (if Catch2 not installed)
cmake .. -DBUILD_TESTING=OFF

Using vcpkg

If you use vcpkg for dependency management:

cmake .. -DCMAKE_TOOLCHAIN_FILE=/path/to/vcpkg/scripts/buildsystems/vcpkg.cmake

Integration into Your Project

Option 1: CMake subdirectory

Add QtNodes as a subdirectory in your project:

add_subdirectory(external/nodeeditor)
target_link_libraries(your_app QtNodes::QtNodes)

Option 2: Installed library

After running cmake --install .:

find_package(QtNodes REQUIRED)
target_link_libraries(your_app QtNodes::QtNodes)

Verifying Installation

Run the calculator example to verify everything works:

./bin/calculator
Calculator example running successfully

Next Steps

Continue to Quick Start to build your first node graph.