Necessitas ++

[BogDan]

Hello folks,

    Today I have the honor to announce the second alpha of Necessitas SDK and the first as a KDE project. YES, we've joined KDE, because we share the same goal; to make Qt more powerful, more accessible, and to keep it free for everyone.

This release brings a lot of exciting new features:
    - we began to move Necessitas to KDE infrastructure:
        * Ministro's and SDK installer repositories are hosted by KDE, I'd like to personally thank KDE because they offered us their support and infrastructure, and Nokia because they kindly sponsored the server.
        * Bug tracking, later, Google and sf.net bug tracking systems will become readonly, we'll move all open bugs to KDE. Please use KDE bug tracking system to report new issues (https://bugs.kde.org/enter_bug.cgi?product=Necessitas&format=guided).
        * Git repositories. I'd like to be clear, we are seeking to push everything to upstream, so, all contributors MUST use gitorious merge mechanism, otherwise Nokia will reject your work. ONLY official Necessitas developers will use KDE's repository to push their commits, we'll try to keep gitorious respos synced with KDE's ones !
        * a new mail list for Necessitas developers https://mail.kde.org/mailman/listinfo/necessitas-devel .
        * slowly but surely we'll move everything to KDE, until then you can still use current infrastructure from sf.net and code.google.com.

    - we've switch to Nokia's SDK Installer, now you'll have the possibility to update/upgrade your installation. Thank you Nokia because you share it with us !

    - Thanks to Ray Donnelly, Necessitas comes with proper support for Windows and latter also for Mac.
    Known issues:
        * The un-install doesn't work on windows so you'll need to remove the install directory manually and clear out any registry keys.
        * You can't create an AVD from within Necessitas on windows, please use Googles SDK Manager for this instead.

    - Qt framework.
        * added proper support for SSL.
        * fix the most annoying bugs.
        * synced with upstream (I've been forced to do it, because of QtWebKit).
    Known issues:
        * a lot: http://code.google.com/p/android-lighthouse/issues/list , http://sourceforge.net/p/necessitas/tickets/
 
    - Thanks to the Elektrobit team, Necessitas comes with QtMobility (preview). Sadly I had to sync QtMobility with upstream, because it wasn't compatible with Qt anymore, so I've probably broken something; also I had to disable Multimedia module until we find a way to support all platforms >=4, I'd like to personally thank Elektrobit team for their priceless work.
    Make sure you select the appropriate android permissions for every QtMobility module you use (e.g. to use Contacts module, android.permission.READ_CONTACTS and android.permission.WRITE_CONTACTS are needed), otherwise your application may crash.
    Known issues:
        * Multimedia module is missing.
        * Probably many more :)

    - We ship QtWebKit 2.1, we activated JIT support, the good news is that now QtWebKit is 2.5x times faster than the previous release, the bad news are: is still 2x times slower than Google's WebKit, also the memory consumption is still insanely high (to run SunSpider benchmark, needs >200Mb).

    - Necessitas is shipped with latest QtCreator 2.2.
        * We added proper support for non-qt apps (check http://blip.tv/file/get/Taipan-UsingNecessitasToDevelopNonqtApplications387.ogv ( youtube: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DIJQBpPSPB0 ) and https://sourceforge.net/p/necessitas/wiki/Using%20Necessitas%20to%20develop%20non-qt%20applications for more informations).
        * Update plugin, thanks to Nokia.

    - Again, thanks to Ray Donnelly, Necessitas ships gdb 7.2(with python support), for the best native code debugging experience out there.

    - We also added possibility to install Google's official SDKs and NDK using Necessitas SDK installer, so you only need to install java and ant on your system.

    - Necessitas comes with a new Android application "MinistroConfigurationTool", which can be used by developers to choose from three different Ministro repositories:
        * "stable" repository is the repository used by normal users.
        * "testing" repository is used to move the latest "regression free" unstable version.
        * "unstable" repository is used to push the newest development version.

        Repositories policy is simple:
        - any major fixes, feature implementation will land in the "unstable" repository quickly, thanks to a script which we developed it during a very long and painful period of time, actually I spent more time to create this script and all additional tools then to code on Qt, with this script we can make a release in days, not in weeks or months.
        - when an *unstable* release is "regression free" for at least two weeks, it will be moved to *testing* repository
        - if a *testing* release is "regression free" for at least three weeks, will become *stable*
    This release is the *ONLY* one which goes directly to all repositories !


Shortly after Qt Contributors’ Summit (Jun 19), we'll share with you the road map for next releases (including beta).


You can download the SDK installers from sf.net project page: http://sourceforge.net/projects/necessitas/files/ and latest Ministro packages from: http://sourceforge.net/projects/ministro.necessitas.p/files/

I would like to conclude this post by thanking, all the amazing contributors to Necessitas for their continuous feedback, ideas and bug reports, again, special thanks goes to Ray Donnelly for his priceless work (on gdb, on Windows and MacOSX ports, on SDK installer/script, QtCreator, Qt, etc.) without his amazing contribution this release wouldn't be possible, to Elektrobit team for their priceless contribution to QtMobility, to Nokia for everything they did for Qt, also because they kindly sponsored our server, to KDE for their first class support!


Yours sincerely,
BogDan.