[gcengineer]

This expands on the solution described by Jesper_Roland at Error ./makeParaview, VTK_QT_VERSION is '5' OF1806.

Many threads describe problems building recent versions of OpenFOAM/ParaView (e.g., 5.6.0) with Qt5 running under recent versions of Ubuntu (e.g., 18.04). The solution here requires only calls to apt-get and works for OpenFOAM-7 and OpenFOAM-v1906. I'm building for 64-bit machines.

When I initially built ParaView out of the box using ./makeParaView, I got a Qt version mismatch error:

CMake Error at VTK/CMake/vtkQt.cmake:6 (message):
   Expected value for VTK_QT_VERSION is '5'

The solution to this error is to install qt5-default:

sudo apt-get install qt5-default

Run ./makeParaView again. The build proceeds but returns a different error:

CMake Error at /usr/lib/x86_64-linux-gnu/cmake/Qt5/Qt5Config.cmake:28 (find_package):
  Could not find a package configuration file provided by "Qt5X11Extras" with
  any of the following names:

    Qt5X11ExtrasConfig.cmake
    qt5x11extras-config.cmake

  Add the installation prefix of "Qt5X11Extras" to CMAKE_PREFIX_PATH or set
  "Qt5X11Extras_DIR" to a directory containing one of the above files.  If
  "Qt5X11Extras" provides a separate development package or SDK, be sure it
  has been installed.
Call Stack (most recent call first):
      VTK/GUISupport/Qt/CMakeLists.txt:71 (find_package)

The package containing a particular file can be found using the apt-file command, which can be installed and updated, if necessary, with:

sudo apt-get install apt-file

   sudo apt-file update

To find the packages containing Qt5X11ExtrasConfig.cmake and qt5x11extras-config.cmake, run the apt-file command (not necessary to run as sudo):

apt-file search Qt5X11ExtrasConfig.cmake

This command returns:

libqt5x11extras5-dev: /usr/lib/x86_64-linux-gnu/cmake/Qt5X11Extras/Qt5X11ExtrasConfig.cmake

This tells us that Qt5X11Extras... is in package libqt5x11extras5-dev. Install the package with apt-get:

sudo apt-get install libqt5x11extras5-dev

(Running 'apt-file search' for qt5X11extra-config.cmake returns null.)

Run ./makeParaView again. The build proceeds but gives another error:

CMake Error at /usr/lib/x86_64-linux-gnu/cmake/Qt5/Qt5Config.cmake:28 (find_package):
  Could not find a package configuration file provided by "Qt5Help" with any
  of the following names:

    Qt5HelpConfig.cmake
    qt5help-config.cmake

  Add the installation prefix of "Qt5Help" to CMAKE_PREFIX_PATH or set
  "Qt5Help_DIR" to a directory containing one of the above files.  If
  "Qt5Help" provides a separate development package or SDK, be sure it has
  been installed.
Call Stack (most recent call first):
  CMake/ParaViewQt.cmake:71 (find_package)
   Qt/Widgets/CMakeLists.txt:221 (pv_find_package_qt)

Running 'apt-file search' for Qt5HelpConfig.cmake:

apt-file search Qt5HelpConfig.cmake

tells us that Qt5HelpConfig.cmake is in package qttools5-dev:

qttools5-dev: /usr/lib/x86_64-linux-gnu/cmake/Qt5Help/Qt5HelpConfig.cmake

Install this package as before:

sudo apt-get install qttools5-dev

('apt-file search qt5help-config.cmake' returns null.)

ParaView builds successfully on running ./makeParaView again.

I confirmed these steps by building ParaView with OpenFOAM-7 and with OpenFOAM-v1906 in separate VMware VMs running Ubuntu 18.04 clients.

On a third physical machine running Ubuntu 18.04, I built ParaView with OpenFOAM-7 using the above steps. I then built ParaView with OpenFOAM-v1906 on the same machine without repeating the above steps. I use aliases to switch between OF7 and OFv1906 environments.


I hope folks find this helpful.