Necessitas alpha 4, a New Hope!

Sun Aug 26 23:53:59 UTC 2012

Congratulations... great job!!!

EDM.

On Sun, Aug 26, 2012 at 7:21 PM, mingw.android <mingw.android at gmail.com> wrote:
> 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> 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> 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> reworked most of Necessitas
>> website and wiki pages. He is also one of the Necessitas website &
>> wiki maintainers.
>>  - Marijn Kruisselbrink <mkruiss... at kde.org> and Chris Browet
>> <cb... at semperpax.com> did most of the native Android menu integration.
>>  - Lauri Laanmets <lauri.l... at proekspert.ee> Android Bluetooth
>> implementation.
>>  - Tyler Mandry <tma... at gmail.com> reworked Java/C++ interaction,
>> added support for Android QML debugging in QtCreator.
>>  - BogDan Vatra <bog_d... at yahoo.com> 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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-- 
Ederson de Moura
http://sites.google.com/site/edersondemoura/