[Interest] My first 5 years with Qt and 2 suggestions

[Shawn Rutledge]

> On 9 May 2019, at 02:09, Henry Skoglund <fromqt at tungware.se> wrote:
> 
> Hi, 5 years ago I started with Qt, it's been a very nice ride, thank you! Looking forward to the next 5. Got 2 suggestions:
> 
> 
> 1) Make Qt more easily accessable for first timers:
> 
> Why not introduce a Qt Starter Pack?
> 
> I'm thinking of an *extremely* simplified installation tool. For Windows, it could be Qt LTS version bundled with the 32-bit MinGW compiler.

That’s suitable for C++ developers.  There are other ideas in the works about how to use standard C++ package management tools (like conan) to find and install Qt.  Of course on Linux there are usually distro packages so it’s already easy (as long as you don’t mind them often being a bit outdated: shame on distros who still didn’t upgrade to 5.12 yet).  And macOS has brew.

Another thing I wish we would get done is to make qml (the runtime tool) available as a package, including at least Qt Quick and Controls 2, and get it into the OS-specific app stores.  So you could run “pure QML” apps without needing a compiler at all.  It’s for end users, and also for very beginner-level developers who only know a bit of JS (or could learn) and are still intimidated by C++.  We should be more consistent about OS integration of QML: make it as easy to run qml files from the file manager as any other scripting language is, by default.  (The installer should register the file type in the right way.)