I have created a C++ Qt application that uses Qt assistant for the help system and would like to deploy it for Linux.

To simulate a target system I created a new directory on my development system in my user directory “/home/username/myapplication” and using linuxdeployqt created the .AppImage of the application and placed this in that new directory and with all .htnl and .png files for the help in a sub-directory Documentation. In my assistant.cpp file function startAssistant has the app and args variables as:

QString app = QLatin1String("/home/username/Qt/5.12.3/gcc_64/bin/assistant");

args << QLatin1String("-collectionFile")
<< QLatin1String("./Documentation/myApplication.qhc")
<< QLatin1String("-enableRemoteControl");

This all works great but I don’t want to have to have Qt installed on the target system.

I tried just copying the assistant executable from /home/username/Qt/5.12.3/gcc_64/bin/ to /home/username/myapplication/ and changing the QString app to “assistant” then when I invoked help the assistant was found because I didn’t get the error message but no help dialog appeared either.

I also tried using linuxdeployqt to create an .AppImage using the assistant executable but that just took me to dependency hell due to libmysqlclient.so.18 which I couldn’t find a way to install it. I assume that because it does work with the QString app set to "/home/username/Qt/5.12.3/gcc_64/bin/assistant" everything I need should already be on my development system. So much for assuming.

Any help would be appreciated. No pun intended.