qbittorrent-nox-static

Summary

The qbittorrent-nox-static project is a bash build script that compiles a static qbittorrent-nox binary using the latest available dependencies from their source. These statically linked binaries can run on any matching CPU architecture and are not OS specific. This means you can run a x86_64 Alpine edge build on any Linux based OS of like CentOS | Fedora | OpenSuse | Debian | Ubuntu and more.

[!TIP] You don't need to use the script to access the binaries it creates, just use the release tag you need or latest release page

See here for how to install the latest release

Linked Github repositories

This build script uses and depends on some related repositories.

• qbt-musl-cross-make - builds the customized musl cross make tool chains this build script uses for Alpine based builds.
• qbt-workflow-files - a dependency tracker to check for and release all of the dependencies this build script needs as a latest release
• qbt-cmake-ninja-crossbuilds - a packaged release of cmake and ninja build for crossbuilds on debian based systems.
• qbt-ninja-build - fully static ninja-build binaries used for Alpine hosts.
• qbittorrent-nox-static-legacy - for people who want to use qBittorrent v4.3.9 built against current versions of the remaining dependencies. Libtorrent v1.2 branch only.

Optional Github repositories

• qbittorrent-nox-static-embedded - experimental upx compressed binaries for testing.

Documentation

[!TIP] Visit the documentation for in depth information on using this project and script usage.

WSL2

[!TIP] These static builds can be used on WSL2 and accessed via localhost:8080 using the download instructions below

Install the latest release

[!TIP] For the most current build visit the latest release page

Or uses these commands for your arch:

x86

mkdir -p ~/bin && source ~/.profile
wget -qO ~/bin/qbittorrent-nox https://github.com/userdocs/qbittorrent-nox-static/releases/latest/download/x86-qbittorrent-nox
chmod 700 ~/bin/qbittorrent-nox

x86_64

mkdir -p ~/bin && source ~/.profile
wget -qO ~/bin/qbittorrent-nox https://github.com/userdocs/qbittorrent-nox-static/releases/latest/download/x86_64-qbittorrent-nox
chmod 700 ~/bin/qbittorrent-nox

armhf (armv6)

mkdir -p ~/bin && source ~/.profile
wget -qO ~/bin/qbittorrent-nox https://github.com/userdocs/qbittorrent-nox-static/releases/latest/download/armhf-qbittorrent-nox
chmod 700 ~/bin/qbittorrent-nox

armv7

mkdir -p ~/bin && source ~/.profile
wget -qO ~/bin/qbittorrent-nox https://github.com/userdocs/qbittorrent-nox-static/releases/latest/download/armv7-qbittorrent-nox
chmod 700 ~/bin/qbittorrent-nox

aarch64

mkdir -p ~/bin && source ~/.profile
wget -qO ~/bin/qbittorrent-nox https://github.com/userdocs/qbittorrent-nox-static/releases/latest/download/aarch64-qbittorrent-nox
chmod 700 ~/bin/qbittorrent-nox

Libtorrent versions

[!IMPORTANT] Libtorrent v1.2 is currently the main branch supported by qBittorrent since a change with the release of 4.4.5

Libtorrent v2.0 builds are still released as latest releases as it it does not really matter to this project as it always builds and releases for both v1.2 and v2.0. See the next section for how to get the version you need via the latest release URL.

[!TIP] You can view the current latest and pre releases and tags here https://github.com/userdocs/qbittorrent-nox-static/tags

Getting the Version you want via the latest release URL

Since this project builds and releases both v1.2 and v2.0 builds simultaneously we can use the commands below to always get the latest version of the related pre release via the latest release dependency-version.json asset.

Using this method it does not matter which version is the latest release or pre release as the commands will provide you the version specific info you need for the twinned latest/pre releases.

For Libtorrent v1.2

jq -r '. | "release-\(.qbittorrent)_v\(.libtorrent_1_2)"' < <(curl -sL https://github.com/userdocs/qbittorrent-nox-static/releases/latest/download/dependency-version.json)

For Libtorrent v2.0

jq -r '. | "release-\(.qbittorrent)_v\(.libtorrent_2_0)"' < <(curl -sL https://github.com/userdocs/qbittorrent-nox-static/releases/latest/download/dependency-version.json)

Revisions

The build has 5 main dependencies tracked that will trigger a rebuild on an update being available.

• qBittorrent
• Libtorrent
• Qt
• Boost
• Openssl

When a new build is triggered for updating qBittorrent or Libtorrent a new release will be generated as the release tags will be updated.

Since I do not append revision info to tags Qt - Boost - Openssl builds will only update the existing release assets.

To track these revisions you can use this command. All new releases start at a revision of 0 and increment by 1 per revised build.

jq -r '.revision' < <(curl -sL "https://github.com/userdocs/qbittorrent-nox-static/releases/latest/download/dependency-version.json")

Dependency json

From release-4.4.5 each release contains a dependency-version.json file that provide some key version information for that is shared across the latest release and the twinned pre release. This helps to overcome some limitations of the API for consistently and directly accessing this information.

Downloading the file like this:

curl -sL https://github.com/userdocs/qbittorrent-nox-static/releases/latest/download/dependency-version.json

Will output a result like this:

{
    "openssl": "3.2.0",
    "boost": "1.84.0",
    "libtorrent_1_2": "1.2.19",
    "libtorrent_2_0": "2.0.9",
    "qt5": "5.15.12",
    "qt6": "6.6.1",
    "qbittorrent": "4.6.2",
    "revision": "3"
}

As demonstrated above by using the latest release URL we can construct the tag of the twinned pre release and therefore the asset URL with no margin for error.

[!IMPORTANT] From the release of qBittorrent v5 configure based builds will be unsupported and we will only be able to use cmake to build qBittorrent v5 onwards. All releases from that point on will drop Qt5 builds as at this point cmake,Qt6 and v5 should be the default and preferred build combination with Qt5 being a legacy dependency.