Qt5 -> KDE5?

Thiago Macieira thiago at kde.org
Mon May 9 21:56:43 BST 2011


On Monday, 9 de May de 2011 22:02:28 Alexander Neundorf wrote:
> > > With Qt5 around the corner[1], I think it is time to start thinking
> > > about KDE5
> 
> That's quite surprising for me.
> The last statements I heard about a Qt5 were "not planned for the forseeable
> future". And now next year is quite soon.

It wasn't planned for the foreseeable future. This is quite recent. The plan 
was to make Qt 4.8 the modularised release, then do a 4.9, 4.10, then start 
thinking of Qt 5.

At some point in late March, we were looking at the difficulty of modularising 
Qt 4.8 and the Qt 5 manifesto (Wayland + Lighthouse + Scene Graph + QML 2). 
Then we decided that modularised Qt = Qt 5.

Then Easter came, we drafted the blog and here we are. No secrecy, no secret 
agenda being worked on behind anyone's back. The blog was published at the 
earliest possible opportunity. Lars started making BIC changes last week on a 
private branch of Qt 5 and it took some time to get the text of Qt 5 reviewed 
by everyone who wanted to review it.

This was so early that the Qt 4.8 blog isn't finished yet...

> 
[big snip]

> I agree 100%.
> We should see this only as a chance to break ABI.

Agreed too. Break ABI and clean up the API, but nothing more.

> So from my POV, we could use this as a chance to reorganize our libraries to
> make them fit for mobile, and more fit for OSX and Windows and 3rd party
> developers, but try to keep the APIs really as much as possible as they
> are. IMO we can't afford another big porting effort already again for all
> the KDE applications which have just been ported to KDE4.

I'd also add the goal of upstreaming into Qt -- and maintaining stuff there.

> Let QML exist and grow and flourish, but let's not try to introduce it big
> way in KDE in the next 12 months or so.

Yup. Qt Quick for Desktop is a worthy goal and I believe it can and will 
revolutionise the way we do UX. But it's not there yet. Heck, even QML is not 
a year old and hasn't had a full cycle of development to iron out all the 
kinks.

The OpenGL requirement is also the right way to go, but reality will need to 
adapt first. We have too many crappy drivers to deal with and a raster engine 
(like Mesa's LLVM-Pipe) to mature first.

Wayland will also be an unproven technology in early 2012. I'm hoping that if 
KDE 5.0 is released in Jan 2013, Wayland will have had one year to mature and 
be rock solid.

-- 
Thiago Macieira - thiago (AT) macieira.info - thiago (AT) kde.org
  Senior Product Manager - Nokia, Qt Development Frameworks
      PGP/GPG: 0x6EF45358; fingerprint:
      E067 918B B660 DBD1 105C  966C 33F5 F005 6EF4 5358
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