[Development] Proposal: Qt 4.9 release

Thiago Macieira thiago.macieira at intel.com
Wed Aug 15 18:47:57 CEST 2012


On quarta-feira, 15 de agosto de 2012 19.36.16, Konstantin Tokarev wrote:
> 2. No QWS in Qt 5.
> 
> Porting of QWS-based embedded application requires more effort for porting.
> For example, in Smartlabs we are using custom graphics plugins for hardware
> we are targeting, and our code depends heavily on QWS API.
> 
> Also, AFAIU from [2] there's no point in using QPA on OpenGL-incapable
> hardware. Our target hardware is doesn't support OpenGL at all, or supports
> OpenGL 1.x only.

That's completely bogus. QPA runs fine on OpenGL-incapable hardware. You seem 
to be mixing messages here:

 - there's no point in running QWS in OpenGL-capable hardware, since QWS is 
too tied to the raster engine. QPA was born out of a project to bring OpenGL 
to QWS.

 - Qt Quick 2 requires OpenGL support.

> 3. Deprecated in Qt 5 / community supported / XCB-less platforms.
> 
> On these platforms Qt 5 may be unavailable for certain period of time, or
> have lesser port quality, so it would be benefitial to have updated Qt 4
> there.
> 
> For example, it would allow to run latest and greatest Qt Creator for some
> time on Solaris, while not preventing Qt Creator from using Qt 5 features
> like QRegularExpression.

I dispute that argument too. First, XCB: it's a very small library and, from 
what I understand, it's got almost no external dependencies. It's a straight 
protocol binding, independent of the X server or the X libs on that platform. 
Therefore, no X11 system was abandoned or deprecated because of the XCB 
change.

Some other changes to X support happened along the way, like the dropping of 
server-side font support. If anyone still depended on that, they should really 
consider upgrading the system instead.

As for support for the OS itself, I'm not sure we're doing ourselves a favour 
by extending Qt 4 support. It might instead backfire: whatever little manpower 
there is on those platforms will remain on Qt 4, instead of fixing issues on Qt 
5.

For example, for Solaris support, since I have yet to see any patches fixing 
anything or even any reports of issues, I have to assume that either it's 
working flawlessly or that there's no one left interested in it.

> 4. QtWebKit 2.3
> 
> New release of QtWebKit (2.3), compatible with Qt 4 is planned, and it would
> be more logical to include it into Qt 4.9 then into new patch release of Qt
> 4.8.

You need to build QtWebKit separately from Qt anyway if you want to enable 
QtSensors and QtLocation support, which are out-of-tree.

> Personally I'd like to port next features into Qt 4:

I'll note you said "I'd like to port" :-)

> * QJson* stuff

Yes

> * QMessageLogger and friends

Unnecessary. These are just the groundwork for the full logging feature that 
is yet to come.

> * QRegularExpression and friends

Yes.

> * QStandardPaths

It's nice that it's in QtCore, but side from a few new locations, 
QDesktopServices should be plenty.

> * New methods QtNetwork module and QSslCertificateExtension

Yes.

> * QLocalServer::listen(qintptr)

Binary incompatible. The qintptr change requires 
QAbstractSocket::socketDescriptor to return qintptr.

> * New QtTest macros
> * Maybe something else

* The compiler macros in qcompilerdetection.h.
* adding loadAcquire and storeRelease to QBasicAtomic (forward source 
compatibility)

I was looking at backporting some improvements today and stopped when both of 
those were absent.

-- 
Thiago Macieira - thiago.macieira (AT) intel.com
  Software Architect - Intel Open Source Technology Center
     Intel Sweden AB - Registration Number: 556189-6027
     Knarrarnäsgatan 15, 164 40 Kista, Stockholm, Sweden
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