@WynnRostek said in cannot find -lGL:

I don't see where this library is getting called to be linked in. I also have no idea what the library actually is.

Those are OpenGL development libraries. They are required by Qt itself.

This is under Ubuntu 18.04. Can anybody shed any light on what be be going on?

http://doc.qt.io/qt-5/linux.html#requirements-for-development-host

thanks @koahnig for your reply

See https://forum.qt.io/topic/26395/how-to-solve-issue-cannot-find-lgl-in-qt5-installed-in-ubuntu

Try to start your computer and then press Strg-Alt-F1. You then should see the text console (you can go back to graphic mode via Alt-F7). Does the text-console work?

Hi and welcome to devnet,

Installing the libgl1-mesa-dev package is the correct solution. libGL's location can change depending on whether you are using a 32 or 64 bit version of Ubuntu.

Note that this question has already been asked many times on this forum, you should search without the minus before lGL.

@jsulm Library file what is very important for building 32-bit?

Just in case someone runs into the same problem and wonders what to install.

I have started out with a fresh Ubuntu 13.10 install on VirtualBox and ran into the same problem after I had installed the pre-build of Qt 5.2.0 with Qt creator.

In my case the libxcb was apparently missing. However, I have installed ICU first, but this did not solve the problem. Therefore, I have started these commands in a terminal:
@
sudo apt-get install libicu-dev
sudo apt-get install "^libxcb.*" libx11-xcb-dev libglu1-mesa-dev libxrender-dev
@