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qlog

Modern Qt station log with award tracking and online-service upload

What it does

A station log built around award chasing: DXCC, WAS, WAZ, IOTA, SOTA, POTA and more tracked per band and mode, with the map and statistics to see what is missing. It reads the rig through hamlib, takes spots from a DX cluster and from WSJT-X, uploads to LoTW, eQSL, ClubLog, QRZ and HamQTH, and imports and exports ADIF.

Why you would want it

It is the most actively developed of the Linux logs and the one whose integrations actually keep working, which is the thing that dates a logging program fastest. Where CQRLOG wants a database server and xlog is deliberately minimal, QLog is the full-featured modern option, and the award tracking is its reason to exist rather than a feature list item.

Before it will work

Your callsign and station location, which every award computation depends on. Rig control needs hamlib to reach the radio. LoTW upload needs a callsign certificate, which comes from TQSL -- this catalog carries trustedqsl for that, and QLog can call it.

How it installs

  • apt: qlog — on parrot, kali
  • Measured 2026-09-06 with apt-cache policy on the VM targets: Parrot 7 candidate 0.52.0-1~bpo13+1 from echo-backports, Kali rolling 0.52.0-1. Both are the version the git block below builds, from the distribution's own packaging rather than a twenty-package Qt6 toolchain and a long compile. Installed through the engine on Kali and on Parrot the same day.
  • git (qmake6) — https://github.com/foldynl/QLog at v0.52.0
  • build dependencies: build-essential, pkg-config, qt6-base-dev, qt6-tools-dev, qt6-tools-dev-tools, qt6-webengine-dev, qt6-serialport-dev, qt6-charts-dev, qt6-websockets-dev, qt6-multimedia-dev, qt6-l10n-tools, libqt6sql6-sqlite, qtkeychain-qt6-dev, libhamlib-dev, libssl-dev, zlib1g-dev, libsqlite3-dev
  • Built from this tag in a Debian 13 container on 2026-08-28, and the dependency list is what that build actually needed rather than what AHRL records for 0.49.1: qmake6 exits 0, make exits 0, and make install with a PREFIX installs bin/qlog, a desktop file, an icon, a man page and an AppStream metainfo file. The first attempt failed on a missing sqlite3.h, which is why libsqlite3-dev is here and why the list was measured rather than copied. qmake6, not qmake: with only qt6-base-dev installed, Debian 13 has no /usr/bin/qmake at all, and installing qt5-qmake to supply the name would hand a Qt6 project the Qt5 tool. QLog is the manifest that made the engine learn the distinction.

Known problems

Parrot (from its backports, which its baseline already uses) and Kali package 0.52.0; Debian 13, Ubuntu 24.04, Ubuntu 26.04 and Pop!_OS 24.04 do not (measured 2026-09-06), so on those this is a source build with a substantial Qt6 dependency set -- around twenty packages and a long compile. The binary the build produces is large because it is unstripped; make install handles that. Award definitions and online-service APIs both change under it, so a build left alone for a year will start failing uploads rather than announcing that it is old.

Toolkit risk

  • qt6: ported, checked 2026-08-28 — Already on Qt6 and building against it; recorded as ported rather than left unknown. Debian's own package tracks the same line.

Keeping it current

  • probe: github tags (foldynl/QLog)
  • strategy: rebuild
  • Actively developed -- v0.52.0 is current and the default branch's head is the same commit (read from the branch, not GitHub's updated_at, D-032). Releases are frequent; online-service integrations are what change most between them.

Where to get help with the software itself

Ladislav Foldyna, OK1MLG. GitHub issues and a wiki at the URL above; the wiki's per-service setup pages are the fastest route through the upload credentials.

Source: catalog/packages/qlog.yaml