[Development] Semi-private headers in Qt

[Thiago Macieira]

On Thursday, 28 May 2026 10:39:27 Pacific Daylight Time Volker Hilsheimer via 
Development wrote:
> The established and documented rules for semi-private APIs like QPA and RHI
> are:
> 
> - no changes within a patch cycle
> - changes (both source- and binary-incompatible) might happen between minor
> releases

What would be the difference to an experimental module? I'd assume that if we 
are trying to get people to adopt experimental things, we wouldn't break at 
will within a minor series. That would make the rules equivalent to the semi-
private.

The difference is that experimental has a goal of becoming non-experimental 
some day.

> This is documented here:
> 
> https://doc.qt.io/qt-6/qrhi.html#details
> https://doc.qt.io/qt-6/qpa.html
> 
> (with slightly different wording and style, but saying the same thing).
> 
> Headers are installed, code using them might have to link against a private
> module.

For all new things, please ensure syncqt puts the headers in the private block 
inside of QtModulename.version, for ELF builds. It does for RHI and QPA.

That means relinking after every patch release.

-- 
Thiago Macieira - thiago.macieira (AT) intel.com
  Principal Engineer - Intel DCG - Platform & Sys. Eng.
-------------- next part --------------
A non-text attachment was scrubbed...
Name: smime.p7s
Type: application/pkcs7-signature
Size: 5176 bytes
Desc: not available
URL: <http://lists.qt-project.org/pipermail/development/attachments/20260528/c57fa0d0/attachment.bin>