aqtinstall

What it is and what it does

aqtinstall is a non-official command-line alternative to Qt's graphical installer, designed for automated and headless environments like CI/CD pipelines. It queries Qt's distribution mirrors to list available versions, architectures, and modules, then downloads and installs prebuilt Qt SDK binaries for your target platform. The tool handles extraction of 7z archives, updates Qt configuration files (qt.conf, qconfig.pri) to match the installation directory, and supports selective module installation.

It runs on Linux, macOS, and Windows, with dependencies on requests for downloading, py7zr for archive extraction, bs4 and defusedxml for parsing mirror metadata, and several utility libraries. The package is actively maintained and used in production CI workflows (GitHub Actions, Azure Pipelines, Docker). Note that aqtinstall itself is MIT-licensed but does not manage Qt's own (L)GPL licensing—users must independently comply with Qt's license terms when installing Qt SDK.

Use it for:

• Automate Qt SDK installation in GitHub Actions, Azure Pipelines, or other CI systems without interactive UI
• Build Docker images with specific Qt versions and architectures pre-installed for reproducible builds
• Install multiple Qt versions or architectures on a developer machine via command line for cross-platform development
• Download Qt sources and documentation alongside binaries for offline development or archival
• Set up Qt for Android with required desktop toolsets in headless build environments

Worth the install?

AI-flagged interpretation of the facts on this page — verify before relying

aqtinstall is a command-line tool that downloads and installs prebuilt Qt SDK binaries, documentation, and sources for CI environments and headless systems where the official graphical installer cannot be used.

Yes, if you need to automate Qt SDK installation in CI/CD or headless environments. The tool is actively maintained, has no known vulnerabilities, and low install friction. However, be aware that you are not affiliated with The Qt Company, must comply with Qt's (L)GPL licensing separately, and must manually configure environment variables after installation. Not necessary for interactive desktop development where the official Qt installer is available.

Install

aqtinstall on PyPI

pip install aqtinstall

uv add aqtinstall

poetry add aqtinstall

Installing aqtinstall

Before you install

Low friction: pure Python wheel with 8 runtime dependencies including requests, py7zr, and bs4 for downloading and extracting Qt binaries. Actively maintained with recent commits and no known vulnerabilities. Requires Python 3.9 or later.

License in practice

MIT-licensed tool itself, but installing Qt SDK through aqtinstall means you agree to Qt's own licenses—primarily (L)GPL Free Software. Users must comply with Qt's licensing terms separately; aqtinstall is not affiliated with The Qt Company.

Quickstart

pip install aqtinstall
aqt list-qt windows desktop --arch 6.2.0
aqt install-qt windows desktop 6.2.0 win64_mingw81 -m all

Requires Python 3.9+. On MSYS2/Mingw64, set environment variable SETUPTOOLS_USE_DISTUTILS=stdlib before installation. You must manually set PATH, QT_PLUGIN_PATH, QML_IMPORT_PATH, and QML2_IMPORT_PATH after installation.

Verify before relying

• Whether all Qt versions available on official mirrors are reliably accessible or if some have been removed by The Qt Company
• Performance characteristics when installing large Qt versions or multiple modules
• Compatibility matrix for specific Qt versions with recent macOS and Xcode versions beyond the tested 6.2.4+

Package facts

Evidence: aqtinstall-3.3.0-py3-none-any.whl

Tags

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