Necessitas alpha 4, a New Hope!

Sun Aug 26 22:21:29 UTC 2012

Fantastic!

On Sunday, August 26, 2012 11:20:14 PM UTC+1, BogDan wrote:
>
> Hello folks, 
>
>  Today I have the great honor to announce the alpha 4 release of 
> Necessitas. Since Nokia’s radical change of direction, Qt has had a 
> very hard time and many asked themselves whether it was worth 
> investing their time and money in it anymore. I’m not going to comment 
> further on Nokia’s recent stupid decisions because I value too highly 
> the contributions Nokia has made to Qt. 
>  Instead, I want to comment on the future of Qt and how to make sure 
> it will survive no matter what. I didn't comment on this matter until 
> now because I was too busy getting this release out, and how better to 
> prove to you folks that we are committed to Qt than to continue our 
> work with this new release? First and foremost Qt is free software, 
> according to the KDE Free Qt Foundation[1] Nokia (and most probably 
> also Digia) must release it under both the LGPL 2.1 and the GPL 3. 
> Otherwise *"the Foundation has the right to release Qt under a 
> BSD-style license or under other open source licenses. The agreement 
> stays valid in case of a buy-out, a merger or bankruptcy."* So from 
> this point of view you don't have anything to worry about! What about 
> Qt's future development, who will continue to work on it now that 
> Nokia have dropped it? While we all share great hopes that Digia will 
> manage the Qt Project well, the beauty of free software if that it 
> doesn't need any single company behind it, it also needs a committed 
> community; KDE, Necessitas, ICS, KDAB etc, and most importantly *YOU*! 
> Now more than ever it is very important for all of us to join together 
> and for you to show your support and appreciation. You have to ask 
> yourself which option is better for you: 
>   - to be selfless and to spend some of your time (or your money) to 
> make the things you love better and to keep them free for everybody... 
>   - or to be selfish, forget about Qt and start learning some crappy 
> closed source C# or iFramework instead which, some day (sooner or 
> later), will die with the *ONLY* company behind it? 
>
>  We choose the first option. The Necessitas developers will do their 
> best to succeed where Nokia has failed: to make Qt available on a huge 
> number of (Android-powered) devices. Yes baby, the next billion is 
> coming! 
>  This alpha 4 release is one of the final steps that we needed to do. 
> It *should* be our last alpha release! If there are no show-stopping 
> regressions reported, in one and a half months we'll ship the first 
> beta release. Why one and a half months? From now on, to be sure that 
> there are no regressions introduced, releases will be made in two 
> steps: 
>   - The first step is to release the SDK, and to push the new Android 
> libs to Ministro's testing repository. The new Android libs will stay 
> in the testing repository for at least one month to give developers 
> enough time to test their apps using them. They should use the 
> Ministro configuration tool to switch to the testing repository. 
> Additional updates will be released in the testing repository and this 
> period may be extended if any regressions are reported. A new update 
> must stay for at least two weeks in the testing repository; known 
> issues are not considered regressions! 
>   - Once the new libs in the testing repository are determined to be 
> regression-free, they will land in the stable repository and they will 
> be available to all Android users. 
>
>  In other words developers should perform the following two steps: 
>   - Update the SDK, use the Ministro configuration tool to switch to 
> the testing repository, update your apps, and report any regressions. 
> *DO NOT* publish any apps on Google Play until the version from the 
> testing repository reaches the stable repository, otherwise they will 
> stop working!!! 
>   - *WAIT* for the alpha 4 release to land in the stable repository, 
> then you can publish the updated apps on Google Play! 
> Go back and carefully read these two statements one more time! 
>
>  The alpha 4 release will stay in the stable repository for another 
> two weeks, then *if no regressions* are reported, it will be 
> re-released as beta 1. Basically we'll simply re-label it as beta 1! 
> From that moment we'll guarantee that the ABI/API will remain stable 
> and therefore you can safely deploy any apps you like on Google Play! 
>
> The most important changes: 
> Necessitas has a new home page: http://necessitas.kde.org 
> Here you can find latest news and information on how to get involved 
> (http://necessitas.kde.org/getinvolved.php), how to help and to get 
> help (http://necessitas.kde.org/gethelp.php) and much more. 
> We've also moved the wiki and the bugs from sf.net to KDE's 
> infrastructure. 
>
> Qt framework: 
> - Update to Qt 4.8.2 
> - Native Android look&feel for classic widgets. 
> - Native Android menus - known limitation: Android menus support only 
> one submenu. We'll try to find a solutions for this problem in a 
> future release (follow https://bugs.kde.org/show_bug.cgi?id=304240 to 
> check its progress). 
> - Fixed user Java/C++ interaction. 
> - New assets access scheme. Please add "assets:" prefix, check 
> http://techbase.kde.org/Development/Tutorials/Necessitas for more 
> information. 
> - SMP safe atomics. 
> - Many bug fixes. 
> Known issues/limitations: 
> - As stated above, native Android menus support only one submenu. 
> - While some demos and examples work fine, many will not, particularly 
> on Windows. 
> - No other new issues. 
>
> Ministro: 
> - Extracts Android native look&feel. 
> - Secure config files downloading. 
> - Bug fixes. 
> Known issues/limitations: 
> - None. 
>
> Qt mobility: 
> - Android Bluetooth implementation. 
> - A few bug fixes. 
> Known issues/limitations: 
> - No new issues. 
>
> QtCreator: 
> - Updated to 2.6 (alpha). 
> - Fixed bug in ma-make.exe where all rule commands were run through a 
> batch file leading to each 8192nd character being dropped. Now 
> CreateProcess is used for nearly all commands, and a work around for 
> the (MS) batch file bug was also implemented. 
> - A few other bug fixes. 
> Known issues/limitations: 
> - This release is based on an un-released QtCreator version, so some 
> unexpected issues may occur. 
> - When you install the qt src package, the source paths mapping is not 
> set automatically anymore so to debug the qt libraries at the source 
> level, you need to set it manually: put 
> “/tmp/necessitas/unstable/Android/Qt/482” in the source path and 
> “YOUR_INSTALLATION_FOLDER/Android/Qt/482” in the target path. 
> - On Windows, adb loses track of the connected devices a lot and 
> otherwise misbehaves (worse with emulators), causing QtCreator to 
> hang. When this happens, to get it to respond again you can execute: 
> android-sdk\platform-tools\adb.exe kill-server & 
> android-sdk\platform-tools\adb start-server & 
> android-sdk\platform-tools\adb devices (from cmd.exe in 
> YOUR_INSTALLATION_FOLDER) or: 
> taskkill /F /IM adb.exe /T  (from cmd.exe in any directory) 
>
> SDK Installer framework has been updated with upstream’s latest 
> changes. One of the biggest improvements is the ability to add 
> 3rd-party repositories, so: 
> - If you are a developer who has something interesting to share for 
> Android (e.g. plugins, custom widgets, QML controls, etc.) please add 
> your repository to 
> http://community.kde.org/Necessitas/3rd_party_SDK_repositories 
> - If you are a developer looking for something which is not shipped 
> with the Necessitas SDK, you can check the same page: 
> http://community.kde.org/Necessitas/3rd_party_SDK_repositories. 
> Known issues/limitations: 
> - Due to some bugs, the old installer can’t be used update the SDK, so 
> you need to reinstall the SDK using the new installers. 
>
> Updated the Android NDK and Android SDK to latest versions. Please do 
> not use the Official Google Android NDK, instead use our Necessitas 
> Special version. 
> The following people have made large contributions to this release 
> (alphabetic ordering): 
>  - Marco Bernasocchi <ma... at bernawebdesign.ch <javascript:>> Moved all 
> the bugs from 
> sf.net to kde.org. He is also one of the Necessitas website & wiki 
> maintainers. 
>  - Ray Donnelly <mingw.... at gmail.com <javascript:>> as usual he had a 
> decisive 
> contribution to this project. He created a custom Android NDK (the 
> official NDK-r8b was not able to build Necessitas), gdb with Python 
> support, and most importantly, the Windows and Mac OS X SDKs. 
>  - Willy Gardiol <wi... at gardiol.org <javascript:>> reworked most of 
> Necessitas 
> website and wiki pages. He is also one of the Necessitas website & 
> wiki maintainers. 
>  - Marijn Kruisselbrink <mkruiss... at kde.org <javascript:>> and Chris 
> Browet 
> <cb... at semperpax.com <javascript:>> did most of the native Android menu 
> integration. 
>  - Lauri Laanmets <lauri.l... at proekspert.ee <javascript:>> Android 
> Bluetooth 
> implementation. 
>  - Tyler Mandry <tma... at gmail.com <javascript:>> reworked Java/C++ 
> interaction, 
> added support for Android QML debugging in QtCreator. 
>  - BogDan Vatra <bog_d... at yahoo.com <javascript:>> Most of the QtCreator 
> Android 
> Plugin, Ministro updates, SDK Installer updates, Android native 
> look&feel (Qt and Ministro implementation), cleanup of native Android 
> menus integration, new assets implementation, SMP safe atomics, most 
> of the bug fixes. 
>
> As usual, special thanks goes to KDE for their hosting and support! 
>
> I'll also like to personally thank everyone who has summited bugs (and 
> even better, patches for some of them!) 
>
> You can check out Necessita's glory wall 
> (http://necessitas.kde.org/people.php) for a complete list of all 
> contributors (who agreed to be listed). 
>
> You can grab the new SDK installer for the following platforms: 
> -GNU/Linux: 
> http://files.kde.org/necessitas/installer/release/linux-online-necessitas-alpha4-sdk-installer 
>
> -Windows: 
> http://files.kde.org/necessitas/installer/release/windows-online-necessitas-alpha4-sdk-installer.exe 
>
> -Mac OS X: 
> http://files.kde.org/necessitas/installer/release/mac_osx-online-necessitas-alpha4-sdk-installer.7z 
>
> Yours sincerely, 
> BogDan. 
>
> [1] http://kde.org/community/whatiskde/kdefreeqtfoundation.php 
>
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