Tuukka Turunen

Qt in World’s Fastest Electric Car

Published May 17, 2013 | By Tuukka Turunen

Digia has supported Metropolia University of Applied Sciences in their electric car project called Electric Raceabout (E-RA). This cool research project has produced a street legal electric sports car, which not only has the World record on ice, but also runs Qt.

Metropolia University, located in Helsinki, Finland, does extensive research on electric vehicles, one example being E-RA – an electric sports car built primarily by automotive engineering students.

With 4-wheel drive and well designed handling E-RA is a really capable sports car with impressive specs:

Top speed of over 260 km/h
Motor power of 282 kW
Peak torque of 800 Nm – in each wheel

And all this provided by an electric vehicle that is fully street legal (and rest assured, the Finnish road inspection is surely one of the toughest in the world to pass).

E-RA has achieved lap time of 8 minutes 42,72 seconds at Nürburgring Nordschleife, which was electric vehicle track record for quite a while, as well as World record as the fastest electric vehicle on ice with average speed of 252,09 km/h. Nicely driven E-RA has operating range of over 200 kilometers.

The students have built both the IVI system and the instrument cluster with Qt 4.8 running on top of Linux. I think the whole E-RA project is a really great proof of the skills the soon-to-graduate engineers have, and certainly the Qt parts are no less impressive.

Have a look on the enclosed video produced by the students at Metropolia University to hear the full story:

Posted in Embedded, Qt in Education, Qt in use | 9 Comments

Qt 5.1 Beta Released

Published May 14, 2013 | By Tuukka Turunen

I am happy to announce that we have today released Qt 5.1 Beta. We are now a major step closer to release Qt 5.1.0, which is expected before the summer. With the Beta release, binary installers for Qt 5.1 are available making it easier for you to get started with Qt. Let’s take a quick look at what is in the package.

Key functionality

The main driver for Qt 5.1 has been to increase the maturity of the new features introduced with Qt 5.0. We have improved the functionality and performance based on the feedback received from real-world use cases of Qt 5.0 and porting applications from Qt 4.x. We are able to meet your needs with Qt 5 because of the feedback and contributions from our growing ecosystem of about 500,000 developers in over 70 industries using Qt on numerous platforms and configurations.

The key new features of Qt 5.1 Beta include:

Qt Quick Controls module providing a set of reusable UI components especially for desktop applications created with Qt Quick
Qt Quick Layouts module bringing an easier, more intuitive, way to manage scalable UIs by ensuring that items are consistently arranged, and that the UI as a whole remains usable across different screen sizes.
Qt Serial Port module providing a cross-platform interface for using hardware and virtual serial ports in Qt applications
Possibility to use Qt Quick and Widgets together in the same application window
Qt Creator 2.7.1 bundled into the package, providing, for example, Qt Quick Designer for rapid prototyping, as well as improved C++11 code editing
Support for static Qt builds making it possible to address those use cases that cannot use dynamic linking
Introducing Qt Sensors as an officially supported module

For a more detailed look, please take a look to the Wiki article listing the new features of Qt 5.1 Beta, refer to the Qt 5.1 Documentation Snapshot as well as the Known Issues page in the wiki.

Binary installers

For most users the big thing with Qt 5.1 Beta compared to Qt 5.1 Alpha is binary installers that provide a convenient way of installing all you need to start developing with Qt without needing to build Qt yourself. With Qt 5.1 we are introducing some new configurations such as 64bit VS2012 with OpenGL, which is already available with the Beta. Soon after the Beta we are upgrading MinGW to version 4.8 and aim to bring also 32bit VS2012 with ANGLE configuration by the time we are releasing Qt 5.1.0.

Qt 5.1 Beta comes as an offline installer, but we will also be providing online installers before the release of Qt 5.1.0 final. The offline installer contains all you need to get started with Qt – tools, documentation, examples and pre-built Qt libraries. Source packages are available for those who wish to build Qt (or need to use a configuration that is not available as a pre-built binary). In addition to the desktop binaries, Qt 5.1 Beta comes with pre-built binaries for Android that can be bundled in with your application.

New platforms

Qt 5.1 Beta provides technology-preview level implementation of the new Android and iOS ports. In addition, Qt 5.1.0 final is planned to re-introduce Windows Embedded Compact 7 support that has earlier been available with Qt 4.8. We have added all these new platforms into the CI system so that each change that goes into Qt is verified to work on these as well as the other platforms and configurations already in the CI. At the moment, the CI for Android and iOS only tests for building, but we are gradually also adding the automated tests to be run on these new platforms, to decrease the possibility of regressions.

There is quite a lot of buzz around the new mobile ports and many are interested in knowing what is possible already with the Qt 5.1 Beta. In general, it can be stated that you can create stunning applications that run smoothly on both of the new platforms, but with limitations in supported functionality and the developer experience of getting your masterpiece into these devices.

With Android the following functionality works quite well in the Qt 5.1 Beta:

Widgets, Graphics View, Qt Quick 1 and Qt Quick 2 applications
OpenGL, networking and other core functionalities of Qt
Some parts of Qt Multimedia, for example QML media player
A set of commonly used sensors with Qt Sensors
Deploying your application to a device from Qt Creator
Debugging your application from Qt Creator
Qt 5.1 Beta comes with pre-built binaries for Android that can be bundled in with your application

With iOS the main issue is Qt Quick 2 not being available, as it needs a new QML engine, but the following functionality works quite well in the Qt 5.1 Beta:

Widgets, Graphics View and Qt Quick 1 applications
OpenGL, networking and other core functionalities of Qt
A set of commonly used sensors with Qt Sensors
Deploying your application to a device from Xcode / iTunes

Next steps

With the release of Qt 5.1 Beta we are one step closer to the Qt 5.1.0 final release, which we aim to have out before summer. Based on the feedback we receive from the Beta, there will be a Release Candidate created in a few weeks time, or alternatively a second Beta.

Please test out Qt 5.1 Beta and send us feedback:

File a bug report to bugreports.qt-project.org in case you find a new bug
Send e-mail to Qt Project mailing lists or contact us via IRC
If you have a commercial license, please contact Digia Qt Support via the Customer Portal

Qt 5.1 Beta release can be downloaded from the Digia Qt Customer Portal or from download.qt-project.org for open-source users.

Posted in Releases | 110 Comments

Visual Studio Add-In 1.2.1 for Qt 5 Released

Published April 11, 2013 | By Tuukka Turunen

It has been a busy week – today we are releasing Visual Studio Add-in 1.2.1 for Qt 5. This is mainly a bug fix release targeting problems found in previous releases. In addition to bug fixes the Add-In now supports Visual Studio 2012 debugger visualizers for Qt 5 classes. On the commercial version there is also support for Qt Quick.

As before, at least Visual Studio Professional is required to use the Add-in. Supported versions are Visual Studio 2012 (update 2 recommended), 2010 and 2008.

Highlights of Visual Studio Add-In 1.2.1 include:

Qt Quick project wizard, QML keyword highlighting and QML file preview in the commercial version
Visual Studio 2012 debugger visualizers for Qt 5 classes
Possibility to use Qt 4 Add-in and Qt 5 Add-in in same computer (in turns)
Incorrect Qt 5 library/module names and include paths fixed

You can find the detailed list of changes to the Visual Studio Add-in 1.2.1 in the change log.

Using Qt 5 VS Add-in and Qt 4 VS Add-in together

Qt 4 Visual Studio Add-in is not allowed to run at same time with the Qt 5 Add-in, if found it will be closed. It is however possible to use both Qt 4 and Qt 5 Add-ins in turns. The user must choose Qt-version within the Add-in manager (both can not be active simultaneously). Extra care must be taken to use correct project and class wizards because both Qt 4 and Qt 5 ones are visible if both Add-ins are installed in system.

Qt Quick support in the commercial version

Digia has created additional functionality to the Visual Studio Add-In available only for the commercial licensees of Qt. The commercial version has new Qt Quick2 Application project wizard for creating project that can contain both QML and C++ code. The commercial Add-In also provides keyword highlighting for QML files and new preview feature for launching qmlviewer.

Get it from the Customer Portal of Qt Project Downloads

The new Visual Studio Add-In 1.2.1 is available for both commercial and open-source users. If you hold a valid commercial license, you can download the new Visual Studio Add-In from the Customer Portal. The open-source version can be downloaded from the Qt Project. If you are not a commercial licensee, but want to try out the additional functionality, you can try our the commercial version with our free 30-day evaluation.

I hope you enjoy developing Qt 5 applications with Visual Studio. Please provide us feedback either through the commercial support or via the Qt Project mailing lists.

Posted in Windows

Qt 5.0.2 Released

Published April 10, 2013 | By Tuukka Turunen

Today we are releasing Qt 5.0.2 – the second patch release of Qt 5.0 series. I am extremely happy about the interest towards Qt 5 as well as the amount of improvements we have been able to add into the Qt 5.0.2 release.

Qt 5.0.2 brings over 600 improvements compared to Qt 5.0.1, most of these in order to address the issues Qt users have noted when bringing their applications to Qt 5. As a patch release Qt 5.0.2 does not introduce new functionality, but we have again been able to add some new binary installers, as well as enable some use cases that have been problematic in the earlier Qt 5 releases.

Highlights of Qt 5.0.2 include:

New binary installers for VS2012 with ANGLE and for VS2010 with OpenGL (for those who do not wish to use ANGLE)
Creator 2.7.0 included in the release package (Qt 5.0.1 was shipped with Creator 2.6.2)
Possibility to easily skip modules in configure when building Qt yourself
Static linking now works correctly for the Qt libraries
Overall more than 600 improvements in 17 different modules of Qt

For detailed list of changes in Qt 5.0.2, please have a look into the changes file included to each module – or check the most important ones: qtbase, qtdeclarative, qtwebkit and qtmultimedia, as well as Creator 2.7.0 release announcement.

As always, Qt 5.0.2 maintains both forward and backward source compatibility with Qt 5.0. We are continuously ironing out the glitches and improving quality with every new release. If you encounter a problem, please check the known issues page first, where you can find solutions and workarounds for common problems. If you find a previously unknown bug in Qt 5, please help us to improve the product in future releases by reporting it to bugreports.qt-project.org, or contact us via our Customer Portal if you have a commercial license.

Qt 5.0.2 is now tagged in the Qt Project repository. The source packages and installers for Qt 5.0.2 are available for download at qt-project.org/downloads for open-source users, as well as via the Customer Portal for commercial licensees.

Posted in Announcements, Releases

First Ten Mirrors Active for Qt Project Downloads

Published April 5, 2013 | By Tuukka Turunen

I am very pleased that we have already ten mirrors from three continents active for the new download service of the Qt Project, and more are on their way. With the new MirrorBrain based setup is it very easy to become a mirror for Qt – and even more importantly it is seamless for the user to benefit from the nearby mirrors.

We plan to use the new download.qt-project.org service starting from next week for the upcoming releases of Qt 5.0.2, Qt 5.1 Alpha and others. The old CDN service will be available as backup. When a release is made you can see it appear to qt-project.org/download page, so everything stays quite similar as before.

If needed, it is easy to see if the file you are planning to download has already been mirrored by viewing the details in conjunction of each file. The mirrors synchronize content with different schedule, so it takes a while for file to become available in all mirrors after it has been released. We are also looking into leveraging torrents as an additional way of downloading files.

For the commercial Qt licensees there are no changes, as the Customer Portal and distribution systems are separate from the open-source downloads.

I hope we continue to receive more mirrors for Qt Project in the coming weeks. If you are interested in mirroring Qt, see instructions how to become a mirror from the Qt Project wiki. Also, feel free to ask you local mirror providers to start mirroring Qt.

Posted in Community, Open Governance, Releases

Qt Project Needs Mirrors for the New Download Service

Published March 28, 2013 | By Tuukka Turunen

The Qt Project is currently using a content delivery network based solution for distribution of releases. We have been working to improve distribution of Qt open-source packages and now have the setup available for mirroring. Now we need to get more mirrors before going to production.

The idea is to switch to MirrorBrain based system and away from the current content delivery network based service. The work was started a while ago by Daniel Molkentin and now we have the setup available for mirroring. It is very much similar to what KDE is already using, so for many it is quite familiar. At this point I would like to thank Danimo and others from KDE for all the help provided to enable this.

The system is not yet taken into production use, we need to first have enough mirrors in place. Downloads from the new service work, but the system is not yet up to handle the needed load. Currently we have two mirrors in place, and need more before the new download service can be taken into production use.

You can find the new download service from http://download.qt-project.org
Information on how to become a mirror is in the Qt Project wiki at http://qt-project.org/wiki/mirror_howto

The new service is for open-source content only. All the commercial Qt licensees are using a separate system. So it is completely ok for non-profit organizations to become a mirror for Qt Project.

If your organization is willing to become a mirror, please follow the steps in the wiki. Or if you know some organization who already provides mirrors, please ask them to become a mirror for the Qt Project.

We are keenly waiting to get the new download service active as it allows much more flexibility than the current setup. Getting the new system into production is also a prerequisite for providing the new online SDK for the Qt Project.

Posted in Announcements, Community, KDE, Open Governance, Releases

New maintenance tool for the commercial Qt 4.8 SDK available

Published February 13, 2013 | By Tuukka Turunen

We have today released an update of the Qt 4.8 SDK maintenance tool for commercial licensees.

The new maintenance tool, version 1.0.3, provides minor maintenance updates with two notable improvements:

Default installation path for Windows is no longer under user’s home folder
License key handling has been improved for evaluation use

There is no immediate need to update the maintenance tool, but it is mandatory to do so before installing new software components through the SDK.

The Qt 4.8 SDK is the primary tool for installing updates and new add-on functionality, as well as maintaining the configuration of your own Qt toolset. It connects to the online repository with all the commercially licensed Qt 4.8 offering including many additional components such as the Charts add-on and ready-made images of Qt for embedded.

We are working to make similar online SDK available also for Qt 5 – most likely available at the end of March or early April. For Qt 5 we aim to provide an SDK also for the LGPL licensed version of Qt in addition to the one available for the commercial licensees.

Those who already have the commercial Qt 4.8 SDK installed can update to the new maintenance tool 1.0.3 directly via the SDK. If you are a commercial licensee and do not yet use the SDK, you can download the maintenance tool from the Customer Portal. If you are not a commercial licensee, you can download our free 30-day evaluation, try it out and see how you like it.

Posted in Qt SDK, Releases

Visual Studio Add-In 1.2.0 for Qt 5 Released

Published December 19, 2012 | By Tuukka Turunen

This week we released Qt 5.0 with Qt Creator integrated into the package. Today I have good news for those who prefer to use Visual Studio. We have now released new Visual Studio Add-In 1.2.0 for Qt 5. In addition to supporting Qt 5 it provides some additional goodies such as support to Visual Studio 2012.

The new Visual Studio Add-In 1.2.0 supports Visual Studio 2012, 2010 and 2008 for developing Qt 5 applications. It understands the new modularized structure of Qt 5, and includes the new documentation. Functionality and requirements are otherwise similar as with the previous Add-In, so you will need at least Visual Studio Professional to use it.

Highlights of Visual Studio Add-In 1.2.0 include:

Project creation wizards updated to follow Qt 5 module structure
Project settings form updated to follow Qt 5 module structure
Help documents updated to Qt 5.0
Support for Visual Studio 2012, 2010 and 2008
Parameter passing to lupdate fixed (QTVSADDINBUG-131)

You can find the detailed list of changes to the Visual Studio Add-In 1.2.0 here.

One thing to note is that there is no Qt 4 project creation wizards and project settings in the Qt 5 Visual Studio Add-In, and unfortunately it is currently not possible to use both the Qt 4 and Qt 5 Visual Studio Add-Ins simultaneously. We plan to release an updated version of the Qt 4 Add-In during Q1/13 to address this issue.

The new Visual Studio Add-In 1.2.0 is available for both commercial and open-source users. If you hold a valid commercial license, you can download the new Visual Studio Add-In from the Customer Portal. The open-source version can be downloaded from the Qt Project.

I hope you enjoy developing Qt 5 applications with Visual Studio. Please provide us with feedback either through the commercial support or via the Qt Project mailing lists.

PS. I changed the release date visible in the blog so that Qt 5.0.0 stays at the top. The real date of this release is 21st December 2012.

Posted in Announcements, Compilers, desktop, Qt, Windows | Tagged VS Add-In

Qt 4.8.4 Released

Published November 29, 2012 | By Tuukka Turunen

Today we have released Qt 4.8.4. Created together with the Qt Project, Qt 4.8.4 contains over 170 fixes and improvements compared to Qt 4.8.3. With important security fixes for Qt Network and Declarative modules the Qt 4.8.4 is a solid release we recommend all active projects to take into use. This release also contains the correct Digia copyrights as already reflected in the Qt repositories.

As a patch release Qt 4.8.4 does not add new functionality and keeps full source and binary compatibility with the Qt 4.8 series. Looking a bit into where these 170+ improvements have landed there are, for example:

41 fixes to Qt Gui module
13 Mac OS X specific fixes
8 Windows specific fixes
5 Linux/X11 specific fixes
36 QNX/Blackberry specific fixes
22 fixes for the tools

A detailed list of the fixes and improvements showing differences from Qt 4.8.3 can be found here.

Additionally I have good news for those who have been waiting for Windows 8 and VS2012 support. We have taken Qt 4.8.4 to a spin with Windows 8 and it runs quite well in the classic (desktop) mode on Intel hardware. Qt 4.8.4 can be built with Microsoft’s new VS2012 compiler, except for building WebKit. You can use the same pre-built VS2010 binaries with Windows 8 in addition to Windows 7.

Qt 4.8.4 is now tagged in the Qt Project repository. The source packages and stand-alone installers for Qt 4.8.4 are available for download at qt-project.org/downloads for open-source users, as well as via the Customer Portal for commercial licensees.

For commercial licensees there is also an online SDK update available for Qt 4.8.4. We are working to provide an open source SDK through the Qt Project after Qt 5.0.0 is out.

Posted in Qt, Releases

Necessitas Android Port Contributed to the Qt Project

Published November 8, 2012 | By Tuukka Turunen

Together with BogDan Vatra, the main author of the Qt for Android port called Necessitas, we have agreed that he will contribute his work into the Qt Project. This is great news and I am truly excited on the things we can do together in the Qt Project. The Qt 5 Android port will be based on the work done in the Necessitas project and BogDan will also continue his work in this area within the Qt Project. This co-operation will enable us to reach Tier 1 status of Qt for Android faster.

Qt for Android is developed actively under the KDE-hosted Necessitas project. There are already many developers who have deployed their apps with it, and an impressive number of users of the Qt-based apps on Android devices – currently over 800.000 active users and 2,7 million downloads. The work done with Qt 4.8 in the Necessitas project provides an excellent baseline to create Qt 5 support together within the Qt Project. Digia is planning to invest into the further development of Qt on Android and aims to introduce Android as fully supported platform of Qt, i.e. as a Tier 1 platform during 2013.

The efforts of getting Qt to run on Android began in late 2010 by BogDan as a hobby project using the newly available QPA of Qt 4.8. The first Alpha release was made available in February 2011 and the port has been steadily growing with supported features, maturity and amount of users. With Qt 5 Android development moving to the Qt Project, the Necessitas project will still continue the work around Qt 4.8. It is expected that the port on Qt 4.8, currently in beta maturity, will be completed in the coming months with most of the work being able to be leveraged on top of Qt 5 in the Qt Project.

It is truly an impressive achievement to create the Android platform support of Qt as well as the Necessitas SDK extending Qt Creator for Android development, and the Ministro installer that allows applications to fetch the needed Qt libraries. BogDan has created most of these, but there have been also many others, for example Ray Donnelly, helping him with the port as well as many others providing feedback.

KDE has been a significant help to the work by providing the needed infrastructure to distribute the SDK as well as the Qt libraries for Android devices. We are grateful for this contribution and hope to be able to continue our co-operation with KDE.

BogDan has expressed interest in being the Qt Project maintainer of the Android port, and I think that would be really great! In addition to BogDan, we want to continue the co-operation with the other members of the community, as we do believe that it is the best way to reach excellent results faster. We are also fully committed in keeping the Android port open and available to all Qt licensees, on both commercial and open-source licenses. The Android port is expected to be available as a development project on top of Qt 5 later this year, and reach full maturity with Qt 5.x releases during next year.

At Qt Developer Days next week in Berlin, we will have a couple of demos running Qt applications on the Android Necessitas port. Hope to see you there. Make sure to sign up! www.qtdeveloperdays.com.

Posted in Embedded, Qt | Tagged Android, Qt, Qt Project

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