Support Qt6

[ahcorde]

Description

This is a metaticket to track the progress of the migration to Qt6

Motivation

Support Qt6 for Lyrical Luth

Design / Implementation Considerations

No response

Additional Information

No response

[ahcorde]

Related PRs

• Support qt6 ros-visualization/qt_gui_core#293
• Support Qt6 ros-visualization/rqt#339
• Support Qt6 ros-visualization/python_qt_binding#143

Rqt plugins (Python)

• Support Qt6 ros-visualization/rqt_plot#127
• Support Qt6 ros-visualization/rqt_msg#27
• Support Qt6 ros-visualization/rqt_reconfigure#158
• Support Qt6 ros-visualization/rqt_console#58
• Support Qt6 ros-visualization/rqt_graph#114
• Support Qt6 ros-visualization/rqt_publisher#56
• Support Qt6 ros-visualization/rqt_service_caller#38
• Support Qt6 ros-visualization/rqt_bag#206

rqt_plugins (CPP)

• Support Qt6 ros-visualization/rqt_image_view#98

Turtulesim: ros/ros_tutorials#188

[ahcorde]

Steps to reproduce in Ubuntu Noble:

Install Qt6.10.1

python3 -m venv qt6-env
source qt6-env/bin/activate
pip3 install shiboken6-generator shiboken6 pyside6 pybuilder catkin_pkg empy sip PyQt-builder numpy lark pyqt6 pyyaml typing-extensions
export CLANG_INSTALL_DIR=/usr

export QT_HOME=<path to Qt6.10.0>/6.10.1/gcc_64
export PATH=$QT_HOME/bin:$PATH
export LD_LIBRARY_PATH=$QT_HOME/lib:$LD_LIBRARY_PATH
export PKG_CONFIG_PATH=$QT_HOME/lib/pkgconfig:$PKG_CONFIG_PATH
export CMAKE_PREFIX_PATH=$QT_HOME/lib/cmake:$CMAKE_PREFIX_PATH

Compile

reset && colcon build --merge-install --event-handlers console_direct+ --cmake-args -DBUILD_TESTING=1 --packages-up-to qt_gui_cpp qt_gui python_qt_binding

[ahcorde]

When running the code with these changes I'm getting this runtime error:

ros2 run rqt_image_view rqt_image_view
...
Could not import "pyside" bindings of qt_gui_cpp library - so C++ plugins will not be available:
Traceback (most recent call last):
  File "/home/ahcorde/ros2_rolling/install/lib/python3.12/site-packages/qt_gui_cpp/cpp_binding_helper.py", line 39, in <module>
    from . import qt_gui_cpp_shiboken
ImportError: /home/ahcorde/ros2_rolling/install/lib/qt_gui_cpp.so: undefined symbol: _ZTVN10qt_gui_cpp13PluginContextE

[ahcorde]

Hi @srmainwaring and @robwoolley

I check in here and here that you already work on supporting qt6 for rqt plugins.

Do you mind to take a look to these PRs ?

Right now rqt plugin written in Python are working but the CPP don't. Here you can find the error that I'm getting.

You feedback and reviews are welcome.

[robwoolley]

Hi @ahcorde, glad to help. I may be slow to start as I am gearinf up for Embedded World, but adding Qt6 support to meta-ros for Lyrical is one of my top priorities.

[srmainwaring]

Hi @ahcorde, I've been running Qt6 for my entire ROS 2 stack on macOS (amd64 and arm64v8). Both rqt and rviz are working, not perfectly but well enough for what I need. This includes the core ROS 2 Jazzy desktop, moveit and nav2. Attached is my vcstool yaml for the core ROS 2 Jazzy build on an arm64 mac. The patches are not clean enough for reintegration back into the main repos, but may help as a starting point or reference.

ros2-jazzy.yaml

I have not pushed my changes for moveit back to my forks, but can do so if that's useful. Most of those changes are for macOS support rather than Qt6. All the moveit tooling seems to work ok - rviz plugins, interactive markers, and the setup assistant.

Would be interested to help get this working for the next LTS version of ROS 2 if this helped reduce the maintenance involved in keeping my dev environment up to date. Perhaps with a Pixi recipe to reduce the issues of brew running a rolling update program which makes it difficult to maintain a stable ROS 2 environment as brew system updates, in particular Python updates, make maintenance a chore.

For the moveit port I used Claude extensively to chase down build errors. The LMM when suitably guided are great at this because its all about chasing down obscure differences in clang and changes to depenencies. Not sure what the view of ROS maintainers in using such changes are, but it definitely reduces the workload.

[ahcorde]

Thank you @robwoolley and @srmainwaring for you quick responses.

For now if you have time to test and review these PRs #1798 (comment) will help me to include this in the next LTS release.

[ros-discourse]

This issue has been mentioned on Open Robotics Discourse. There might be relevant details there:

https://discourse.openrobotics.org/t/ros-pmc-minutes-for-march-3-2026/52968/1