[Development] QtWebKit is coming back (part 2)

[Konstantin Tokarev]

03.05.2017, 17:27, "Sergio Martins" <sergio.martins at kdab.com>:
> On 2017-05-03 15:02, Konstantin Tokarev wrote:
>>  Remaining question is versioning. While it's fine to dub current
>>  release "5.9" (but not 5.0, because we will have another WebKit update
>>  in 5.10 time frame), using Qt versions in QtWebKit has downsides:
>>
>>  1. It is not clear if 5.N+1 ships with the same WebKit branch as 5.N,
>>  or is updated
>>  2. It makes people believe that QtWebKit 5.N should be used with Qt
>>  5.N only. QtWebKit supports wide range of Qt versions (starting from
>>  5.2 as of now), and can be used e.g. as security update in Linux
>>  distro that does not normally update Qt version during its life cycle.
>>
>>  Any comments?
>
> If Qt and QtWebKit will have different release schedules then that
> numbering would indeed confuse people.
>
> Have you thought about an LTS version too ? What would LTS mean, for
> QtWebKit ? I think during the LTS lifetime we would still need to update
> the inner WebKit, for security reasons, (that even happened for
> QtWebEngine in a 5.6.x patch release).

I'm not sure it would be acceptable, because updated QtWebKit requires full
C++11 support in the compiler (gcc >= 4.9, 4.8 possible with disabling some
features, or with code changes, which were not done yet).

Also, there are differences in supported platforms and system requirements.

macOS: One user reported that QtWebKit TP5 built for OS X 10.9 target is working fine
on OS X 10.7, however the oldest officially supported version is 10.10 (as in upstream).
I'm pretty sure that WK2 IPC with Mach ports will break when compiling for older targets,
though it should be possible to switch to unix sockets just for 5.6.

Windows: Windows XP support seems to be feasible, if needed, without new
MediaFoundation-based player. Will require backporting Conan-related patches in
qt5.git to 5.6 branch.

Linux: GStreamer 0.10 is not supported, so official builds with video will have to use
QtMultimedia MediaPlayer implementation.

I'm not sure about QNX support in QtWebKit 5.6, it is skipped in CI now because of
missing ICU. However, I guess it will be possible to reintroduce QNX support if there are
interested folks here, at least Widgets API.

All platforms will need to have cmake >= 2.8.12, this might reduce testing coverage for
older cmake versions in 5.6

>
> Thanks for your efforts on this!
>
> Regards,
> --
> Sérgio Martins | sergio.martins at kdab.com | Senior Software Engineer
> Klarälvdalens Datakonsult AB, a KDAB Group company
> Tel: Sweden (HQ) +46-563-540090, USA +1-866-777-KDAB(5322)
> KDAB - The Qt, C++ and OpenGL Experts

-- 
Regards,
Konstantin