[Development] Support for your evaluation of Qt

[Christian Gagneraud]

On 11/07/2014 11:22 a.m., Thiago Macieira wrote:
> On Friday 11 July 2014 10:05:03 Christian Gagneraud wrote:
>> Boot To Qt for Embedded Linux (Not talking about android here), is based
>> on Yocto (which is open-source), there exists a Qt5 layer (Dedicated
>> Yocto sub-project), and I think that Digia should be the official
>> maintainer of this project. Digia could work hand and hand with Silicon
>> Company like Intel, Texas Instrument, Freescale, Xilinx (these companies
>> maintain their own SoC specific Yocto layers). Everyone would win if the
>> Qt5 Layer was in a good shape and tested on platform based on the
>> above-mentioned SoC's manufacturers.
>> Today, these SoC manufacturers provide SDKs (Linux kernel + cross
>> toolchain + demo image) and few provide a SDK that contains Qt5. I think
>> it is Digia's role to help spread the Qt technology on embedded Linux.
>
> Participating in Yocto by maintaining the Qt5 layer and working on Boot to Qt
> are orthogonal to each other.
>
> Digia could do both if it wanted to.

Well at least before they started "Boot to Qt w/ Android", working on 
boot to Qt implied polishing the Yocto Qt5 layer or writing another one 
from scratch. They obviously did some work on that and it's a pity that 
nothing have been given back to the community. That was my point.

> Or someone else could do the maintaining of the Qt 5 layer in Yocto. I don't
> see the problem with that either: the Qt Project has a lot of people from
> different companies collaborating together. We don't depend on Digia doing
> everything.

No, Qt doesn't depend on Digia, but Digia depends on Qt!
When you look at their "Qt Enterprise Embedded", it's Qt, QtCreator, 
QtSimulator, GNU, Linux, Android, .... with a pinch of "Enterprise 
plug-in's and add-on's" all well packed together.

> Besides, IIRC the Boot to Qt project was trying to use the Android base layer
> because that's the best BSP that most silicon vendors provide. Notably, the
> vendors not participating in Yocto.

They might have switched to Android (Well, apparently not really [1], 
Yocto is used both for targeting Android and "Pure" Embedded Linux), but 
AFAIK you can boot to Qt in less than 0.5s with a bare embedded Linux 
(using Yocto or similar), whereas it takes 10 times longer with Android.

Having said all these, Digia has its own business model, maybe I was 
expecting Digia to behave much like Nokia, my mistake.

Chris

[1] 
http://linuxgizmos.com/qt-embedded-gui-adds-yocto-recipes-hops-up-emulator/