[Development] Supported platforms for Qt 5.8

[Blasche Alexander]

> -----Original Message-----
> From: Development [mailto:development-
> bounces+alexander.blasche=theqtcompany.com at qt-project.org] On Behalf Of
> Andreas Holzammer
...
> Am 22.02.2016 um 23:52 schrieb Thiago Macieira:
> > On segunda-feira, 22 de fevereiro de 2016 21:08:12 PST Knoll Lars wrote:
> >> I can see the reasoning here, just as well as I see the reasoning of the
> >> people that would like to get rid of VS2012 as quickly as possible.
> >
> > Why do we need to get rid of it? What are the problems with it, aside from
> > lack of certain C++11 support?
> >
> 
> Mostly yes we see a demand in getting new c++ features into Qt. As far
> as my knowlege goes is that WEC2013 bundles they compiler with the SDK
> which is produced by the Platform Builder. As of now I did not see any
> indication that this bundled compiler will be updated(right now they
> bundle the VS2012 compiler). All websites which I did read say if you
> read closely that they are supporting the new Visual Studio IDE, but
> will take the toolchain of the SDK which is provided.
> 
> Basically it means we are stuck with Visual Studio 2012 c++ featureset
> for Windows Embedded Compact 2013.

I spoke to the Microsoft guys on Embedded World today. They confirmed that it is 2012 and there are no plans to update this. In fact that went as far as saying that the relevant development team behind WEC2013 has been abandoned to the point that the essential support is barely possible. 

> If we want to support newer C++ with Qt 5.8 we would need to drop the
> complete platform.

And this is the main reason behind this push.

> On terça-feira, 23 de fevereiro de 2016 19:16:48 PST Andreas Holzammer wrote:
> > As of problems to support it in newer Qt Versions, I can say the market
> > share right now is not very big, as also already indicated by someone
> > else. Hardware vendors do release right now more experimental support
> > for WEC2013, which means there might be years until they reach a decent
> > market share.
> 
> To be clear: are you expecting WEC2013 market share to increase?

Those projects which would grow this market would have to have acquired their license already as I have heard that new WEC2013 licenses are not handed out anymore. At the very least you have to "twist" Microsoft's arms to get hold of one. That's not a good starting point for a growing market. This is a firm Micosoft management decision despite the mentioned offering gaps.

>On Tuesday, 23 February 2016 13:09:10 WET Thiago Macieira wrote:
> > But you cannot commit major refactorings to improve stability in an patch
> > release, especially not the LTS release. Remember that 5.6 is also the last
> > release to support WEC7, so you cannot risk its stability for a platform
> > that's only experimental.

> But are we going to need major refactorings ? We need to know the state of
> wec2013 before discussing further, no point in speculating on what was meant
> by "experimental".

The answer is no. The principle feature set is working. There are some gaps related to device debugging but those gaps are due to non-open protocols. The term "Experimental" is a rather bad choice of word.

The commitment towards WEC2013 in Qt 5.6 is what really matters due to its LTS character. By the time 5.6 support runs out Qt 5.8 support has been ancient history.

In summary Qt does not gain anything from pushing WEC2013 to 5.8:

- Potential Qt Customers are not stranded due to 5.6
- WEC2013 in 5.8 doesn't really enable more projects
- MS says it is dead and licenses are hard to come by
- the currently visible project pipeline is rather dry on this platform

*But* our C++11 offering is yet longer chained.

There simply is no justification for such a move on the business and technical side.

--
Alex