Open Source Ecosystems

A Qt6.5 program for developing native and browser-based GUI applications, built with CMake, Qt Creator, and Emscripten, featuring a fully interactive Chess engine.

Description

As a final build, this project focuses again on the Qt Framework and creates a cross-platform graphical user interface for playing a game of Chess. Qt handles widget customization, piece renderings, and event handling while the Board class manages positional logic, game rules, and piece interactions.

As before, this project makes use of WebAssembly, a binary instruction format, capable of running alongside Javascript inside a virtual environment such as a web browser. Emscripten will again be used to compile the C++ application into WebAssembly (WASM) and JavaScript (js) files and finally deployed to be used across the web.

Getting Started

Dependencies

Qt 5/6
CMake
Launch Qt VSCode Extension
GCC (Linux/macOS) C++ compiler (install via apt or brew)
Clang (macOS/Linux) C++ Compiler (x86/x64)
Xcode Command Line Tools - Required for macOs
Emscripten Compiling C++/C projects to WebAssembly

Building

VSCode macOs

Running on mac using VSCode requires the Launch Qt Extension along with CMake. Using WebAssembly for browser compilation requires setting system Path for Emscripten: source "$HOME/emsdk/emsdk_env.sh"

To Run:

- cd build
- cmake .. 
- cmake -build .
- open ChessGame.app

Qt Creator

Using the Qt IDE:

- Run cmake
- Run

To run the application on a web browser using Qt Creator, ensure that compatible versions of Emscripten and WebAssembly are installed. Then set the Devices' Emscripten SDK path /users/path/to/emsdk/ and Build using the WebAssembly Qt Kit.