[Development] Android port - Why do we need Ministro?

Felipe Crochik qt-project at b2-4ac.com
Fri Jan 11 15:36:43 CET 2013


I have to assume this subject has been discussed before in other lists but
since the android port it is a "hot topic" on this list right now I thought
it was worth starting again.

I deployed a test application using the necessitas project and while I was
impressed on how nice the development experience was (minor a few crashes
on qt creator) I found out that most users that tried to install my
application had a very hard time.

The current flow requires a user to:
1) download your "app" from the store;
2) When executing it for the first time (assuming that the user has never
installed another application based on necessitas) the application will
redirect the user to the google play store to download ministro (what I
found most users will not understand);
3) After installing ministro the user will need to know to try to execute
the "app" again;
4) On executing the app for the second time the qt libraries will be
downloaded.
5) enjoy the app!

Are there plans to change this flow? I have to assume there were good
reasons to do like this but without actually looking into the code it seems
that would make more sense to combine the ministro code with the java
wrapper generated for each application, no?

I understand ministro plays an important part and donwloads the right
version of the libraries for each device and that we would have to
duplicate its code with every application but it seems like a very
reasonable price to pay if that would actually make the "first install"
experience better. Are there any other technical reasons why this approach
would not work?

cheers,
Felipee
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://lists.qt-project.org/pipermail/development/attachments/20130111/ab22db42/attachment.html>


More information about the Development mailing list