Installing NCReport

Requirements

  • Linux or another Unix-like operating system, Microsoft Windows, or macOS 10.5 or later.

  • At least 512 MB of memory and a 1 GHz CPU.

  • 90 MB of free disk space.

NCReport is officially supported on Windows XP/Vista/10/11, on Linux 2.6 or later, and on macOS 10.4 or later. It can also be used on other platforms supported by Qt, but with limited or no support from us.

NCReport has been tested with:

  • Qt 4.5 to Qt 6.10 under Windows XP/7/10/11

  • Qt 4.5 to Qt 6.10 under Linux (Ubuntu 10.04, 12.04, 16.04, 18.04, 20.04, 22.04, 24.04, and Debian)

  • Qt 4.7 to Qt 6.10 under macOS 10.6 to macOS 12

Current versions of NCReport are written in C++17 and are built with Qt5 or Qt6.

Install binary package on Linux

Make sure that the appropriate Qt version binaries are already installed on your Linux system. The required version is specified in the downloaded package. Unpack the NCReport Linux distribution to any directory you want (for example, ncreport):

$ mkdir ncreport
$ cd ncreport
$ tar xzvf ncreport2.x.x.tar.gz
$ cd bin

The NCReport binaries are intended to be used directly from the bin directory of the unpacked package; you can start them by simply executing them. To start the report designer:

$ ./NCReportDesigner

To start the command line report engine (see Command line client):

$ ./NCReport

Afterward, you may want to add this bin directory to your $PATH.

Install (commercial) source package under Linux

Make sure that the GCC/G C compiler and the appropriate version of the Qt (Qt5 or Qt6) development environment are already installed on your Linux system. In addition, you need to compile and install the appropriate Qt database drivers. The example reports mostly use the QMYSQL and QSQLITE database drivers.

Unpack the NCReport Linux source package in any directory you want and build it:

$ cd directory
$ tar xzvf ncreport2.x.x.tar.gz
$ cd NCReport2.x.x
$ qmake -r
$ make

The build options (optional modules such as the Designer, the console application, barcode support, and so on) can be set in the src/config.pri file before running qmake. To start the NCReport binaries, follow the steps described in the previous section.

Install binary package on Windows

We strongly recommend that you download and install one of the self-installing setup files (NCReport_2.x.x_Windows.exe or NCReport_2.x.x_Windows_MinGW.exe).

Simply run the setup executable and follow the instructions of the setup wizard. To start NCReport Designer, use the Start menu.

Install (commercial) source package under Windows

This option is available to license holders only. Make sure that a Windows C development environment is already installed on your system. If you use the open source version of Qt, the `GNU MinGW` compiler is included in the Qt SDK. The following example shows the build procedure using the `Microsoft Visual C` compiler.

Make sure that the appropriate version of the Qt development environment is already installed on your Windows system. In addition, you need to compile and install the appropriate Qt database drivers. The example reports mostly use the QMYSQL and QSQLITE database drivers.

Unpack the downloaded ncreport2.x.x.zip, .tar.gz, or .7z source package. Use a tool such as WinZip or 7-Zip; Windows has built-in support for .zip archives. To unzip the NCReport distribution into any directory and build it:

mkdir ncreport
cd ncreport
unzip ncreport_2.x.x_src.zip
qmake -r
nmake release

When using the MinGW compiler, run mingw32-make release instead of nmake release.

Contents of the installation directory

  • /bin Contains the NCReport executable files.

  • /doc Contains the User Guide and API documentation in HTML format.

  • /sql Contains the SQL script files required for some of the example reports.

  • /reports Contains the sample reports that demonstrate NCReport features.

  • /lib Contains the binary library files (Unix/Linux only).

  • /testdata Contains test files for demonstration purposes. The defaulttestdata.xml file is used by the Designer application to store test data. If you want to use it, copy this file to the /bin directory before starting NCReportDesigner.

  • /i18n Contains internationalization files.

  • /images Contains image files used by some of the sample reports, for example mysql_productlist_with_dynimages_demo.xml.

  • /src Contains the source code of the NCReport system. The binary package contains only the source code of the demo and sample applications. The full source code is available to commercial license holders only.

Acknowledgements

On Windows, the NCReport installer is built using Inno Setup, Jordan Russell’s software (https://www.jrsoftware.org). We highly recommend this excellent, free-to-use tool.