[Tutorial] How to run an manually installed program from terminals in Linux / Ubuntu

Say we have installed qt programs and we want to run qtcreator from the command line.

What we need here is only to put a soft link to the qtcreator we have just installed. Here are some simple precedures.

1. Once the Qt program is installed, open up a terminal and use a text editor such as nano or gedit to edit your /etc/profile.

   • Type/Copy/Paste: sudo -s nano /etc/profile
   • or
   • Type/Copy/Paste: sudo -s gedit /etc/profile
    
2. Scroll down to the end of the /etc/profile file and enter the following text below. You want to add this line below to your /etc/profile system wide file so that you will have the option to compile Qt programs from the terminal line.
    
3. Type/Copy/Paste:
   • PATH=/opt/Qt5.7.0/Tools/QtCreator/bin:$PATH
   • export PATH
    
4. The above number highlighted in bold denotes the version number of the Qt SDK so make sure you enter the correct version number of the Qt SDK. The Qt SDK is always improving with new version changes. So make sure you are mindful of your Qt SDK version number.
   • For example, we are using Qt version 5.7.0 in this example, therefore the version number in the /etc/profile would reflect as 5.7.0
    
5. Save the /etc/profile file and exit
    
6. Reload the /etc/profile file by issuing the following command
   • Type/Copy/Paste: . /etc/profile
   • Make sure you enter a . and then a space in order to reload your /etc/profile file
    
7. Once the /etc/profile file is reloaded issue the following command you can type the following commands to make sure your Ubuntu Linux system recognizes that the Qt SDK has been accepted by the system PATH.
    
8. Type/Copy/Paste: which qtcreator
   • You should receive a response such as the one below
   • /opt/Qt5.7.0/Tools/QtCreator/bin/qtcreator
    
9. Also type the following command below:
   • Type/Copy/Paste: qtcreator -version
    
10. You should receive a response similar to this:
    • Qt Creator 4.0.2 based on Qt 5.7.0
     
11. This lets you know that you are able to run qtcreator programs from the command line.