QElectroTech

Synopsis: QElectroTech "QET" is a free schematic editor targeting power electric drawings. It can also draw pneumatics, hydraulics, electronic schematics, flowcharts...

Links

• Main page: https://qelectrotech.org/
• Tutorial videos: https://www.youtube.com/user/scorpio8101/videos
• Manual https://download.tuxfamily.org/qet/manual_0.7/build/index.html
• Forum: https://qelectrotech.org/forum/index.php
• Bugtracker: https://qelectrotech.org/bugtracker/

A lot of information is in French only, but use DeepL, Google translate or other tools to translate.

Versions

Mageia 7 & 8 have 0.8 packaged in updates, Mageia 9 release with 0.9.

For other versions including development version check below: AppImage, Flatpak, COPR autobuild, or Build it locally.

Upstream packages

AppImage

Using AppImages it is easy to have several versions installed at the same time, i.e.: create work using the current version, use the old version to edit old work without losing compatibility for other users still on the old version, and try out the development version.

There are AppImages at https://download.qelectrotech.org/qet/builds/AppImage/ of version 0.5, 0.6, 0.7, 0.8, 0.9, and the in 2023 development version 0.100.

Tested OK on Mageia 8 64 bit Plasma March 2023: QElectroTech_0.9-r7759-x86_64.AppImage, QElectroTech_0.100.0-r7832-x86_64.AppImage

Also, see the discussion threads here and here.

Flatpak

QET is also available as Flatpak.

• Flatpak main repository "flathub" provide released version (but as of March 2023 only version 0.8).
• For the development version use special repository, see QET Forum.

COPR

Development version auto-built rpm for current Mageia and Cauldron are here, using Fedora COPR.

To install:

# dnf copr enable remi/qelectrotech
# dnf in qelectrotech

(To learn about DNF, see Using DNF.)

As of March 2023 it gives the development version 0.100, and it works.

Building

How to build latest development version locally

/!\ (This chapter was written for Mageia 6! It need to be updated, i.e more deps, and it now use git)

Alternatively, you can compile and run it also to get debug info in Qt Creator, so you may want to install package qt-creator instead. (Details are out of scope for this article.)

Get required system packages

As root:

# urpmi gcc make subversion qtbase5-common-devel lib64qt5svg-devel lib64qt5xml-devel lib64qt5network-devel lib64qt5printsupport-devel lib64qt5concurrent-devel lib64qt5sql-devel

Download sources

As normal user:

$ cd ~/Download
$ svn checkout svn://svn.tuxfamily.org/svnroot/qet/qet/trunk qelectrotech-trunk 
$ cd qelectrotech-trunk

Next time, instead do:

(this requires that you have kept the qelectrotech-trunk folder)

To quickly check if there is an update, and then get it:

$ cd ~/Download/qelectrotech-trunk
$ svn up

Patch revision number (optional)

This makes "qelectrotech -v" as well as the about dialogue, report the revision number. Not important.

Both svn commands above end telling you the revision number.

You can also ask any time: In this folder issue:

$ svnversion

In the file sources/qet.h, edit the string in line (example version 0.51-dev) :

const QString displayedVersion = "0.51-dev"; 

After "-dev" add the revision in the form " +svn 4728", in this case forming

const QString displayedVersion = "0.51-dev +svn 4728"; 

Someone good at sed could maybe post a one-liner for it here... ;)

Configure and compile

Continue in folder qelectrotech-trunk:

First uninstall earlier creation

If you have compiled and "make install" QElectroTech before in this folder first uninstall it, as root:

# make uninstall

Then as a normal user

$ make clean

The new one

Now, for both first time and subsequent times, as a normal user

$ qmake
$ make -j8

Here "j8" means use 8 threads, i.e suitable for fast compile on an i7 CPU. You usually change the number to same as the number of available cores plus minus one depending on taste, or just omit "-j8" above so it uses one thread only if you are not in a hurry.

Install

/!\ If you have QElectroTech installed by rpm package (including COPR), file copying etc - then uninstall it before continuing!

But: it is OK to have one more AppImage and Flatpak too installed.

Install the fresh version as root:

# make install

Housekeeping

Where important files are stored

• Configuration: ~/.config/QElectroTech/QElectroTech.conf
• Users own created elements and titleblocks
  • ~/.qet/
  • OR can an be set as start parameter, i.e

qelectrotech --config-dir=/some/path/

https://qelectrotech.org/forum/viewtopic.php?pid=6275#p6275

Also see command line options, try entering $ qelectrotech --help

Also see https://qelectrotech.org/wiki_new/doc/options_compil_exec

For AppImage and Flatpak, see https://qelectrotech.org/forum/viewtopic.php?pid=8364#p8364