QT Creator is a cross-platform IDE designed to build Qt applications. The Qt Creator IDE is currently the preferred choice to build and run custom qt applications on the reMarkable tablet.

$ sudo apt install qtcreator

Note: On Linux Mint the qtcreater package is outdated. Please install the Qt Creator IDE via the Qt Online Installer.

# pacman -S qtcreator

# yum install qt-creator

For other Linux distributions, please refer to the distribution specific package manager and package list. Optionally, or if your distribution does not provide a qt-creator package, you may follow the official Qt Creator Manual and build Qt Creator from source.

For applications to be able to run on the reMarkable, they must be compiled for the ARM architecture using the toolchain provided by reMarkable engineering.

Download the toolchain installer on your host machine

$ curl https://remarkable.engineering/oecore-x86_64-cortexa9hf-neon-toolchain-zero-gravitas-1.8-23.9.2019.sh -o install-toolchain.sh

Before executing the toolchain installer, ensure that bsdtar is installed. Then Execute the toolchain installer:

$ chmod +x install-toolchain.sh
$ ./install-toolchain

You will be prompted to specify an installation path. It is highly recommended to use the default SDK path as it is used trough out this article.

The QT Creator IDE must first be configured to support cross-compiling for the reMarkable tablet. It is assumed that the toolchain has been installed to /usr/local/oecore-x86_64

Open the options menu under Tools > Options > Kits and follow the latter steps

Under the QT Versions tab, click on Add… and select the qmake binary located in /usr/local/oecore-x86_64/sysroots/x86_64-oesdk-linux/usr/bin/qmake. Set the Version name to reMarkable 5.11.3 to follow up with this guide.

Under the compilers tab, click Add > GCC. From there you'll have to add a C and C++ compiler.

Set the path of both compilers to /usr/local/oecore-x86_64/sysroots/x86_64-oesdk-linux/usr/bin/arm-oe-linux-gnueabi/arm-oe-linux-gnueabi-gcc and name them reMarkable GCC each and keep the ABI settings at arm-linux-generic-elf-32bit.

Under the debuggers tab, click Add and set the path to /usr/local/oecore-x86_64/sysroots/x86_64-oesdk-linux/usr/bin/arm-oe-linux-gnueabi/arm-oe-linux-gnueabi-gdb. Set the name to reMarkable GDB

Under the kits tab, click Add. From there ensure all properties are set as shown in the following table :

CMake related properties have been left out from the table as they should remain unmodified. Should Qt creator report that the Qt Version already exists, simply alter the name to something different.

Qt has to be able to establish connection to your device for it to directly install and execute code on it.

Add an entry for your reMarkable tablet under Tools > Options > Devices. From there go to the Devices tab and click Add > Generic Linux Device.

Set a name for the device, such as reMarkable, and specify the necessary SSH credentials to access your device.

After all steps above have been completed, close the current Qt Creator session and source the toolchain environment:

$ source /usr/local/oecore-x86_64/environment-setup-cortexa9hf-neon-oe-linux-gnueabi

Then start Qt creator from the same sh session:

$ qtcreator

On every new shell session, the toolchain environment must be sourced before Qt Creator has been opened.*

At this point, Qt Creator should be able to build and execute code on your reMarkable tablet as long as its unlocked and connected (via SSH) to the host machine.

Tip:

The device's graphical interface, xochitl, may undesirably interfere and overlap with the executed Qt Application. To stop this behavior from reoccurring, stop the xochitl service on your reMarkable trough systemctl:

remarkable: ~/ systemctl stop xochitl

To start the GUI again, either restart the device or start xochitl from systemctl:

remarkable: ~/ systemctl start xochitl