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Does Minotor still build? Yes, with two lines

September 2026 · minotor.org

The last commit to Minotor is from February 2017. We built it this month on current hardware to see what nine years had done to it. Everything below is from one run, and the logs are summarised rather than retouched.

The machine

• Apple M4, macOS 26.3.1, Apple clang 14.0.3
• Qt 5.15.19 from Homebrew (brew install qt@5)
• Minotor at commit 9251ecf, the final one

Attempt 1: exactly as the README says

qmake
make

Fails after 6 seconds:

Core/ledmatrix.h:31:10: fatal error: 'qextserialport.h' file not found

The project file assumes that on any Unix system QExtSerialPort comes from a distribution package, as it did on Debian. macOS counts as Unix to qmake, so the copy bundled in libraries/ is never used — it is only wired in for Windows.

Attempt 2: use the bundled library on macOS

One line in Minotor.pro: unix { becomes unix:!macx {. The build gets much further and stops in the easing-curve widget:

Ui/Widget/uieasingcurve.cpp:61:18: error: variable has incomplete type 'QPainterPath'

Older Qt 5 releases pulled QPainterPath in through <QPainter>; Qt 5.15 no longer does, so the file has to include it itself.

Attempt 3: add the include

One more line, #include <QPainterPath>, and it builds:

• 13.6 s wall clock with make -j8
• 56 warnings: 53 are Qt APIs marked deprecated since 2017, the other three are one sign comparison, one integer used as a boolean and one macro check in the bundled RtMidi
• minotor.app, 988 KB, native arm64, linked against Qt 5.15 and CoreMIDI

Started with Qt's off-screen platform, it stays up, registers a virtual MIDI input called “Virtual MIDI In”, and reports that no LED matrix is connected — which is correct, none was.

The whole change is a 2-file patch, GPL-3.0 like the code it touches. Apply it with git apply inside a clone of the repository.

What this does not tell you

One machine, one run. We did not drive the interface by hand, sync it to a DAW's MIDI clock or push frames to real LEDs; “it builds and starts” is all this shows. Linux was not tested — there the README's qt5-default package is gone, as the download page explains. And Homebrew already lists qt@5 as deprecated, so this route has a shelf life. The lasting fix would be a Qt 6 port, where the bundled QExtSerialPort gives way to Qt's own QtSerialPort module.

minotor.org is back

September 2026 · minotor.org

For most of the last nine years this address showed a parking page, while the Minotor repository on GitHub kept listing it as the project's homepage. Anyone who clicked through from there found ads. As of this month the documentation is back.

What is here now:

• The wiki — all seven pages that had real content, including the complete guide to building a WS2801 LED matrix and the rhythm theory page on MIDI clock. Where a link had died or a figure did not add up, there is a clearly marked editor's note; the original text is otherwise untouched.
• All 19 animations, with their preview images and parameters, read straight from the source code.
• An honest download page. The short version: there was never a stable release, the Ubuntu PPA stops at 17.04, and the build instructions in the README fail on current distributions because qt5-default no longer exists.

We are not the Minotor team and have no connection to Romuald Conty or Gauthier Legrand — the about page explains who runs the site and why. If you are one of them, or you have a copy of anything that was lost (the forum, the team-setup photos, the Windows builds), write to hello@minotor.org.

Next on this blog: does the last commit, from February 2017, still build on a current machine?

Minotor live video

Here is a small video of our first live test using Minotor. Everything went well ^^ now we just need a little more practice.

Watch on YouTube

Welcome to Minotor's website

We are pleased to present you Minotor's website. Here you can find all information about the free/libre VJing software. We will provide access to source code and documentation very soon.