9 ms·

Qt 5.9 LTS released

107 points by jjuhl 9y ago

Vogtinator 9y ago
Testing shows that it works better than Qt 5.8.0, but that's rather easy. Some regressions introduced by 5.8 (some wayland related) aren't fixed yet and Qt WebEngine does not build on AArch64. There is a bug that breaks applications using kdialog horribly and in the 5.9 branch (to-be 5.9.1) there's already a change that changes behaviour in a (incompatible with the 5.9 doc!) way that breaks some existing applications. At least they can't make any excuses to not release 5.9.x releases this time...
- beojan 9y ago
  > There is a bug that breaks applications using kdialog horribly That was fixed in the 5.8 branch. I wonder why the fix isn't in 5.9.
  - Vogtinator 9y ago
    That's a different bug then, the one I'm referring to was introduced in 5.9...
- rehemiau 9y ago
  They could make money on qt creator. It is a very good c++ IDE and people use it not only for creating Qt apps. Make a basic version free but allow installing extensions and other advanced features after paying for the license.
  - ronjouch 9y ago
    They could, but given the focus and revenue sources for The Qt Company (licensing their tech to run in embedded devices: cars, fridges, etc.), that would probably be very little money. Better spread shiny shiny QtCreator as widely as possible, for free, like a dealers' first free hit to the expensive dope and the ecosystem (which I'm not belittling, it's awesome!). Disclaimer: I'm only a passersby, these are informal feelings based on observing the Qt world.
EStudley 9y ago
It's a shame I'll never get to use features past Qt 5.4 after their insistence on LGPLv3 and royalties per device sold..
- moron4hire 9y ago
  What suggestion would you make for them to be able to make a living off of open source software? EDIT: also, it's LGPL or $80/developer-month, not and. I don't see anything about royalties. And considering the GPL doesn't apply until you start distributing the software, you don't need to spend that money during development. You can wait to license when you release and start getting revenue.
  - cannam 9y ago
    I don't know whether this has changed, but they used to forbid you from developing with the open source edition and then releasing under a commercial licence. (They did this with a term in the commercial licence that specified that it couldn't be used with code previously developed with the open source edition.) This was quite a confusing policy in some ways. I think in practice they expected to resolve such situations by backdating payments for the commercial licence to cover the development period. (Edit: from https://www.qt.io/faq/#_Toc_3_13 https://www.qt.io/faq/#_Toc_3_13 it looks like the policy is unchanged but the wording around it has been softened a bit to encourage negotiation)
    - jononor 9y ago
      3.13 (and 3.12) sounds primarily for avoiding that a company has 30 developers with only the 1 developer (or CI bot) that does the release having a Qt commercial license. Or that you develop for 12 months and get a commercial license the last month,, when its going to be released.
      - deleted 9y ago
        [deleted]
    - bluGill 9y ago
IshKebab 9y ago
Qt Lite is commercial only right? Edit: Ah yes it does say: > For the time being, the Configuration UI Tool is a commercial only tool, that adds value for our Device Creation customers.
- dotti 9y ago
  Configuration tool may be, but Qt Lite is just a bunch of new configuration options. Try ./configure -list-features
justinclift 9y ago
One thing unfortunately (still) missing is validation of server side HTTPS/TLS/SSL certificates on OSX. eg if you've built a client application which runs on OSX, calling the verify() function on the cert returned by a server just prints "Unimplemented code." on stdout/stderr. https://bugreports.qt.io/browse/QTBUG-56973 https://bugreports.qt.io/browse/QTBUG-56973 Not totally sure how to work around that before its fixed, but kind of thinking maybe running some openssl (etc) commands on the client might do the trick. Focused on other stuff atm anyway, so haven't really thought about it in depth. ;>
- e12e 9y ago
  In other words there's no meaningful ssl support on os X?
  - justinclift 9y ago
    Seems like it. :(
- tartboogers 9y ago
  Looks like there are a couple of other functions in the Secure Transport backend that aren't implemented. Pretty irresponsible to put that kind of insecure-default code into a production library. The workaround is to compile Qt to use OpenSSL instead of Secure Transport.
  - justinclift 9y ago
    Oh good point. Thank you. :) If we do that, we'd be able to make OSX versions of our app instead of having to do some dodgy "validate the cert using direct openssl calls" approach. That definitely sounds workable.
    - tartboogers 9y ago
      Also, you're using the "verify" function incorrectly. Take a look at the documentation for that function; it doesn't do what you think it does anyway. So even on non-Mac platforms, you weren't verifying the peer certificate. I'm going to stop looking at that QSsl API. It looks very poorly designed. http://doc.qt.io/qt-5/qsslcertificate.html#verify http://doc.qt.io/qt-5/qsslcertificate.html#verify
wiz21c 9y ago
Just a bit off topic, but are there many people still using Qt to write desktop software ? I mean, Qt's not React or Angular, but I find it very easy to work with as long as there is not much asynchronicity required...
- cheez 9y ago
  Writing async Qt is pretty easy, take a look at QFuture
- mherrmann 9y ago
  I'm using PyQt to develop a file manager [1]. Pretty happy with it so far. I chose it over Electron because of performance [2]. [1]: https://fman.io https://fman.io [2]: https://fman.io/blog/picking-technologies-for-a-desktop-app-in-2016/ https://fman.io/blog/picking-technologies-for-a-desktop-app-...
  - jackmott 9y ago
    thank you
- stephen_g 9y ago
  We use it to write little applications for communicating with embedded devices for factory testing, calibration, etc. Generally PyQt for the little ones and then full C++ for the mode complex ones.
- gcp 9y ago
  Assuming you require portability, the other options are generally all Chrome-based, so if you like you application to not look like shit, I mean, look native... There's only really wxWidgets in this space, which is order of magnitude smaller. I guess on Windows there's .NET if you don't care for other platforms as much. Do people still use other toolkits for writing native C++ apps with GUIs? MFC? Native win32 code?
  - roel_v 9y ago
    MFC here! When you use it as a thin wrapper around win32 it's not bad. Actually I quite like it, but that's probably at least partly because I've been using it for so long and I know the warts. I'm convinced that the time I spend on working around its age and oldschool architecture is less than what I would have spend had I switched/"upgraded" toolkits every 3-5 years as seems to be the common practise. Same goes for using C++, btw.
santaclaus 9y ago
> The OpenGL paint engine does now work with OpenGL Core profiles as well. Oh, this is pretty awesome! I was running into issues updating an old Qt program with QPainter a few days ago, this is super timely.

107 points by jjuhl 9y ago

Testing shows that it works better than Qt 5.8.0, but that's rather easy. Some regressions introduced by 5.8 (some wayland related) aren't fixed yet and Qt WebEngine does not build on AArch64. There is a bug that breaks applications using kdialog horribly and in the 5.9 branch (to-be 5.9.1) there's already a change that changes behaviour in a (incompatible with the 5.9 doc!) way that breaks some existing applications. At least they can't make any excuses to not release 5.9.x releases this time...

beojan 9y ago
> There is a bug that breaks applications using kdialog horribly That was fixed in the 5.8 branch. I wonder why the fix isn't in 5.9.
- Vogtinator 9y ago
  That's a different bug then, the one I'm referring to was introduced in 5.9...
rehemiau 9y ago
They could make money on qt creator. It is a very good c++ IDE and people use it not only for creating Qt apps. Make a basic version free but allow installing extensions and other advanced features after paying for the license.
- ronjouch 9y ago
  They could, but given the focus and revenue sources for The Qt Company (licensing their tech to run in embedded devices: cars, fridges, etc.), that would probably be very little money. Better spread shiny shiny QtCreator as widely as possible, for free, like a dealers' first free hit to the expensive dope and the ecosystem (which I'm not belittling, it's awesome!). Disclaimer: I'm only a passersby, these are informal feelings based on observing the Qt world.

EStudley 9y ago

It's a shame I'll never get to use features past Qt 5.4 after their insistence on LGPLv3 and royalties per device sold..

moron4hire 9y ago
What suggestion would you make for them to be able to make a living off of open source software? EDIT: also, it's LGPL or $80/developer-month, not and. I don't see anything about royalties. And considering the GPL doesn't apply until you start distributing the software, you don't need to spend that money during development. You can wait to license when you release and start getting revenue.
- cannam 9y ago
  I don't know whether this has changed, but they used to forbid you from developing with the open source edition and then releasing under a commercial licence. (They did this with a term in the commercial licence that specified that it couldn't be used with code previously developed with the open source edition.) This was quite a confusing policy in some ways. I think in practice they expected to resolve such situations by backdating payments for the commercial licence to cover the development period. (Edit: from https://www.qt.io/faq/#_Toc_3_13 https://www.qt.io/faq/#_Toc_3_13 it looks like the policy is unchanged but the wording around it has been softened a bit to encourage negotiation)
  - jononor 9y ago
    3.13 (and 3.12) sounds primarily for avoiding that a company has 30 developers with only the 1 developer (or CI bot) that does the release having a Qt commercial license. Or that you develop for 12 months and get a commercial license the last month,, when its going to be released.
    - deleted 9y ago
      [deleted]
  - bluGill 9y ago

IshKebab 9y ago

Qt Lite is commercial only right? Edit: Ah yes it does say: > For the time being, the Configuration UI Tool is a commercial only tool, that adds value for our Device Creation customers.

dotti 9y ago
Configuration tool may be, but Qt Lite is just a bunch of new configuration options. Try ./configure -list-features

justinclift 9y ago

One thing unfortunately (still) missing is validation of server side HTTPS/TLS/SSL certificates on OSX. eg if you've built a client application which runs on OSX, calling the verify() function on the cert returned by a server just prints "Unimplemented code." on stdout/stderr. https://bugreports.qt.io/browse/QTBUG-56973 https://bugreports.qt.io/browse/QTBUG-56973 Not totally sure how to work around that before its fixed, but kind of thinking maybe running some openssl (etc) commands on the client might do the trick. Focused on other stuff atm anyway, so haven't really thought about it in depth. ;>

e12e 9y ago
In other words there's no meaningful ssl support on os X?
- justinclift 9y ago
  Seems like it. :(
tartboogers 9y ago
Looks like there are a couple of other functions in the Secure Transport backend that aren't implemented. Pretty irresponsible to put that kind of insecure-default code into a production library. The workaround is to compile Qt to use OpenSSL instead of Secure Transport.
- justinclift 9y ago
  Oh good point. Thank you. :) If we do that, we'd be able to make OSX versions of our app instead of having to do some dodgy "validate the cert using direct openssl calls" approach. That definitely sounds workable.
  - tartboogers 9y ago
    Also, you're using the "verify" function incorrectly. Take a look at the documentation for that function; it doesn't do what you think it does anyway. So even on non-Mac platforms, you weren't verifying the peer certificate. I'm going to stop looking at that QSsl API. It looks very poorly designed. http://doc.qt.io/qt-5/qsslcertificate.html#verify http://doc.qt.io/qt-5/qsslcertificate.html#verify

wiz21c 9y ago

Just a bit off topic, but are there many people still using Qt to write desktop software ? I mean, Qt's not React or Angular, but I find it very easy to work with as long as there is not much asynchronicity required...

cheez 9y ago
Writing async Qt is pretty easy, take a look at QFuture
mherrmann 9y ago
I'm using PyQt to develop a file manager [1]. Pretty happy with it so far. I chose it over Electron because of performance [2]. [1]: https://fman.io https://fman.io [2]: https://fman.io/blog/picking-technologies-for-a-desktop-app-in-2016/ https://fman.io/blog/picking-technologies-for-a-desktop-app-...
- jackmott 9y ago
  thank you
stephen_g 9y ago
We use it to write little applications for communicating with embedded devices for factory testing, calibration, etc. Generally PyQt for the little ones and then full C++ for the mode complex ones.
gcp 9y ago
Assuming you require portability, the other options are generally all Chrome-based, so if you like you application to not look like shit, I mean, look native... There's only really wxWidgets in this space, which is order of magnitude smaller. I guess on Windows there's .NET if you don't care for other platforms as much. Do people still use other toolkits for writing native C++ apps with GUIs? MFC? Native win32 code?
- roel_v 9y ago
  MFC here! When you use it as a thin wrapper around win32 it's not bad. Actually I quite like it, but that's probably at least partly because I've been using it for so long and I know the warts. I'm convinced that the time I spend on working around its age and oldschool architecture is less than what I would have spend had I switched/"upgraded" toolkits every 3-5 years as seems to be the common practise. Same goes for using C++, btw.

santaclaus 9y ago

> The OpenGL paint engine does now work with OpenGL Core profiles as well. Oh, this is pretty awesome! I was running into issues updating an old Qt program with QPainter a few days ago, this is super timely.