7 ms·

Introducing the Qt Lite project – Qt for any platform, any thing, any size

102 points by aurhum 10y ago

protomyth 10y ago
"At least for now, the configuration tooling will be a part of the Qt for Device Creation product, and not open source." I do wonder how a lot of companies's dual license model is going to interact with the IoT / embedded world.
- joezydeco 10y ago
  I'm thinking about avoiding it for my IoT device node work. I'm prototyping a node project right now for a large customer (>50K deployments) and while Qt helped me get code running quickly there won't be a way to comply with the dynamic linking model on my final hardware. Can't afford the Qt license in my BOM (probably would be 25% of my bill) so out it goes.
  - protomyth 10y ago
    Any idea what you are going to replace it with?
    - joezydeco 10y ago
      A lot of my smaller devices uses FreeRTOS, it's got a nice simple scheduler and it's easy to work with. I've also used the uEZ application later from FDI on top of FreeRTOS when I need a more robust application. Although I'm looking at the Kinetis M3 line for upcoming work, so I might use mbed.
newsat13 10y ago
The amount of editorial in this post is mind blowing. Am I the only one who found it extremely hard (yes, extremely) to sift through all the blurb of text. In the end, I am not even sure what is being released.
- deleted 10y ago
  [deleted]
- throwaway745234 10y ago
  I'm impressed you even managed to start reading. I only scrolled...
- kbutler 10y ago
  Skimmed it. TLDR: will be able to configure smaller subsets of Qt modules so you don't have to deliver the whole package on small systems.
- walterbell 10y ago
  Would have been better if editorial/positioning was separated from facts via subject headings.
n00b101 10y ago
The new configuration system in Qt, allows your define the content you need from each module in much more detail for your project and easily allows for feature based tailoring of the Qt modules. We are starting with enabling this fully for Qt Core, Qt Network, Qt GUI, Qt QML and Qt Quick. You can now fine tune which features from these modules you want to include in your project. There is no longer any need to include unnecessary features. To be clear, this potentially reduces binary sizes, but it does not by itself change run-time performance. No Open GL Requirement ... The Qt Quick 2D renderer can work in software only, but it is also designed to utilize accelerated 2D operations, for devices that packs a little bit more punch, but still doesn’t have full OpenGL support. I wonder what kinds of devices this is intended for? Presumably, they are a very important market for Qt to have implemented this? And these devices have graphics displays but they lack GPUs? What device could that be? CPU software rendering seems like a step backwards for performance. GPUs and OpenGL must be more energy efficient at this task than software rendering, and I would imagine that important embedded devices with graphics displays must all have GPUs or will in the future? I would have thought that "Qt for any platform" would include web browser (WebAssembly / Emscripten / WebGL) but no such luck. Based on the title, I thought this was going to be some drastic optimization of Qt's GUI. It doesn't sound like that's the case. I haven't used Qt on embedded devices, but I've looked at several demos of Qt compiled to JavaScript with Emscripten [1] and the results seem very slow. Part of the reason seems to be that these Emscripten demos have Qt falling back to software rendering, instead of using WebGL accelerated rendering ... I don't think that another software rendering backend for Qt solves this problem. [1] http://vps2.etotheipiplusone.com:30176/redmine/projects/emscripten-qt/wiki/Demos http://vps2.etotheipiplusone.com:30176/redmine/projects/emsc...
- roymurdock 10y ago
  Automotive In-Vehicle-Infotainment (IVI) systems that feature embedded SoCs running Linux for the GUI on an MPU and embedded RTOSs on MCUs for some of the more real-time/routine functions. Energy efficiency is secondary to the unnecessary cost/performance profile of building in a GPU to render relatively simple dashboard graphics. The automotive market is the fastest-growing (and one of the largest) vertical markets for embedded MCU/MPUs, and by extension, embedded software.
Rexxar 10y ago
What is the benefit over static linking and letting the linker remove unused symbols ? (without considering licensing rules)
- jjnoakes 10y ago
  Mostly the new software render, which can run without OpenGL.
tonetheman 10y ago
Is it out anywhere? I looked through it and never saw a download link or check out the code here... something.
kbart 10y ago
I wish they had done this few years back. I've wasted waaay too much time trying to minimize and cram down Qt to the small devices.

102 points by aurhum 10y ago

"At least for now, the configuration tooling will be a part of the Qt for Device Creation product, and not open source." I do wonder how a lot of companies's dual license model is going to interact with the IoT / embedded world.

joezydeco 10y ago
I'm thinking about avoiding it for my IoT device node work. I'm prototyping a node project right now for a large customer (>50K deployments) and while Qt helped me get code running quickly there won't be a way to comply with the dynamic linking model on my final hardware. Can't afford the Qt license in my BOM (probably would be 25% of my bill) so out it goes.
- protomyth 10y ago
  Any idea what you are going to replace it with?
  - joezydeco 10y ago
    A lot of my smaller devices uses FreeRTOS, it's got a nice simple scheduler and it's easy to work with. I've also used the uEZ application later from FDI on top of FreeRTOS when I need a more robust application. Although I'm looking at the Kinetis M3 line for upcoming work, so I might use mbed.

newsat13 10y ago

The amount of editorial in this post is mind blowing. Am I the only one who found it extremely hard (yes, extremely) to sift through all the blurb of text. In the end, I am not even sure what is being released.

deleted 10y ago
[deleted]
throwaway745234 10y ago
I'm impressed you even managed to start reading. I only scrolled...
kbutler 10y ago
Skimmed it. TLDR: will be able to configure smaller subsets of Qt modules so you don't have to deliver the whole package on small systems.
walterbell 10y ago
Would have been better if editorial/positioning was separated from facts via subject headings.

n00b101 10y ago

The new configuration system in Qt, allows your define the content you need from each module in much more detail for your project and easily allows for feature based tailoring of the Qt modules. We are starting with enabling this fully for Qt Core, Qt Network, Qt GUI, Qt QML and Qt Quick. You can now fine tune which features from these modules you want to include in your project. There is no longer any need to include unnecessary features. To be clear, this potentially reduces binary sizes, but it does not by itself change run-time performance. No Open GL Requirement ... The Qt Quick 2D renderer can work in software only, but it is also designed to utilize accelerated 2D operations, for devices that packs a little bit more punch, but still doesn’t have full OpenGL support. I wonder what kinds of devices this is intended for? Presumably, they are a very important market for Qt to have implemented this? And these devices have graphics displays but they lack GPUs? What device could that be? CPU software rendering seems like a step backwards for performance. GPUs and OpenGL must be more energy efficient at this task than software rendering, and I would imagine that important embedded devices with graphics displays must all have GPUs or will in the future? I would have thought that "Qt for any platform" would include web browser (WebAssembly / Emscripten / WebGL) but no such luck. Based on the title, I thought this was going to be some drastic optimization of Qt's GUI. It doesn't sound like that's the case. I haven't used Qt on embedded devices, but I've looked at several demos of Qt compiled to JavaScript with Emscripten [1] and the results seem very slow. Part of the reason seems to be that these Emscripten demos have Qt falling back to software rendering, instead of using WebGL accelerated rendering ... I don't think that another software rendering backend for Qt solves this problem. [1] http://vps2.etotheipiplusone.com:30176/redmine/projects/emscripten-qt/wiki/Demos http://vps2.etotheipiplusone.com:30176/redmine/projects/emsc...

roymurdock 10y ago
Automotive In-Vehicle-Infotainment (IVI) systems that feature embedded SoCs running Linux for the GUI on an MPU and embedded RTOSs on MCUs for some of the more real-time/routine functions. Energy efficiency is secondary to the unnecessary cost/performance profile of building in a GPU to render relatively simple dashboard graphics. The automotive market is the fastest-growing (and one of the largest) vertical markets for embedded MCU/MPUs, and by extension, embedded software.

Rexxar 10y ago

What is the benefit over static linking and letting the linker remove unused symbols ? (without considering licensing rules)

jjnoakes 10y ago
Mostly the new software render, which can run without OpenGL.

tonetheman 10y ago

Is it out anywhere? I looked through it and never saw a download link or check out the code here... something.

kbart 10y ago

I wish they had done this few years back. I've wasted waaay too much time trying to minimize and cram down Qt to the small devices.