Necessitas android alpha 3 is live :) next billion devices is here :)
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Here the full post of BogDan on android-qt mailing list (Perhaps someone can add this to Qt Blog ?)
Hello everybody,
I know we are a little late to the party, but we'd like to say:
Happy birthday KDE !!!
Of course we couldn't come with empty hand, so we come with a gift:
the Necessitas alpha3 release !Necessitas alpha3 release should be the last but one release, before
we'll ship first beta version. Why the beta release is so important
and why is delayed that much? The beta release will GUARANTEE the
API/ABI compatibility, meaning that an application which uses that
version will run without any change, on any further releases! It
also means you can target a billion devices using Qt, much sooner than
you expected Of course if the situation will require we reserve the
right to release additionally alpha releases, because going to beta is
a great responsibility we can't afford to screw it up. IF everything
goes right, we want to release the first beta SDK until the end of
this year !Also don't forget that this release is focused mostly on features
completeness, the next releases will be focused mostly on stability,
so if your issue(s) is/are not yet fixed, please have a little more
patience (and understanding ).Most of all, we need your help to make it happen, so please:
- help us to write documentations, FAQ, and to update and maintain
project web pages. - help us to answer peoples questions on android-qt mailing list,
doing this you are helping us more than you can imagine. - report any issues you find using http://code.google.com/p/android-lighthouse/issues/list,
or https://sourceforge.net/p/necessitas/tickets/ - help us to check and fix the opened issues.
- help us to implement the remaining features http://community.kde.org/Necessitas/TODO
, http://community.kde.org/Necessitas/Schedules/alpha4
Alpha 3 release brings you lots of exciting features, I'd like to talk
a little bit about two of them:- OpenGL this is probably the most expected and exciting feature of
this release. Yes, is here ! We tried (and succeed) to give you a
seamless OpenGL support, even if we have different platform plugins to
handle raster and OpenGL drawings, you don't need to worry about it,
if your application will require OpenGL, we'll choose automatically
the right plugin for your application. - Java redesign and Ministro II, this is a huge step forward for this
project, this work will give us freedom to change the platform plugin
as we wish without breaking any existing application. How it works ?
Your applications doesn't know anything about qt libs, platform
plugins and stuff like that, it only knows that it needs to connect to
Ministro service, pass some parameters to it and to wait for its
response, when the response comes it will have a list with .jar files
which your applications needs to load them at runtime and to
instantiate the startup class, this class will load Qt libs and your
application. Basically the old java part was moved to these .jar files
which will be provided by Ministro, Ministro will take care that
the .jar files and qt platform libs will always be compatible.
BE AWARE !!! Because your application needs other java sources, please
make sure you are removing the old ones (please remove android folder
from any existing project)!!!I'd like to highlight the most important features:
Qt framework:
- OpenGL Support
- Java part redesign
- QAtomic implementation
- Seamless Android assets support
- Sync with upstream Qt 4.8.0-rc1
QtCreator:
- Prepare the package for android market publishing
- Sync with QtCreator 2.3.1
QtWebkit:
- Sync with QtWebkit 2.2.0
- It seems that the massive memory leak form 2.1.x was fixed.
QtMobility:
- Sync with Qt framework changes.
Necessitas SDK:
- Linaro toolchain based on gcc 4.6.x (it is experimental)
- Android-4+ (armv5 & raster only) SDK
- Android-5+ (armv5&armv7, raster&OpenGl) SDKs
Minitro:
- Can provide specific CPU extensions libraries, this feature allows
us to provide not only platform specific libs (armv5, armv6, armv7,
x86, etc.) but also libs for specific CPU extensions, e.g. if your CPU
supports VFP but the platform not (is the case of armv5) Ministro can
download libs for armv5 WITH VFP flags turn on, also if automatic
vectorization [1] will improve the speed will ship Qt libs compiled
completely with NEON, where devices CPU supports NEON instructions,
currently Qt detects at runtime if your CPU supports NEON and it uses
that extension only in a few drawing functions. - Sync with Qt framework changes
- help us to write documentations, FAQ, and to update and maintain
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the end of the mail :
For a complete change log please run the following command on every
repository:
$ git log n0.21..n0.3The following people have contributed to this project:
== Code ==- Thomas Senyk: OpenGL support, fixes
- Ray Donnelly: Linaro toolchain integration, NDK, gdb, Windows, and
Mac fixes and SDKs. - Nuno Pinheiro: beautiful artwork for necessitas project (except the
SDK watermark). - Robert Schuster, Christian Küster java redesign proof of concept,
Ministro code cleanup and fixes. - Espen Riskedal: fixes (initial fonts fixes)
- Marius Bugge Monsen: cleanup the repo.
- Åke Svedin: initial DPI fix patch.
- all Nokia developers which worked to all qt projects !
- BogDan Vatra: Java redesign, QAtomic implementation, Android
assets, QDesktopServices, QtCreator Android market publishing,
QtCreator android plugin rework, Ministro, SDK for Linux, fixes.
== Localizations ==
- Lauri Laanmets: Estonian
- Joost Bloemen, Maarten Ditzel: Duch
- Alexander Wolf: Russian
- Nikos Gerontidis: Greek
- Samuel Gaist: French
- Andrius da Costa Ribas, Anselmo L.S. Melo: Brazilian
- Leonard Lee: Malay, Chinese (Simplified and Traditional)
- Thomas Senyk, Josua Dietze
- Ivan ipansmail@googlemail.com: Indonesian
- Dejan Gojkovic: Serbian
- Maciej Kujalowicz: Polish
- Tomas <tomaslov@gmail.com >: Norwegian
- Taro <taro.develop@gmail.com >: Japanese
- Seyyed Razi Alavizadeh: Persian
- Roberto Luttino: Italian
- BogDan Vatra: Romanian
The SDKs installers can be downloaded from: https://sourceforge.net/projects/necessitas/files/
The new Ministro packages from: https://sourceforge.net/projects/ministro.necessitas.p/files/Known issues:
Linux:
- None till this date.
Mac:
- Sadly we found a show stopper just before release and we delayed
the release a few days until we'll figure out what is wrong. We'll
come with a separate announcement when this platform will be ready.
Windows:
- You must select manually the application (projects->run->package
configurations->Run: <select the application >) Open [2] and search
for "Application Tab". A fix will be available next week. - You can't create AVDs from within QtCreator.
I want to personally thank to all who answered other people
questions, to all how reported errors and made suggestions ![1] http://infocenter.arm.com/help/index.jsp?topic=/com.arm.doc.dht0002a/ch01s04s03.html
[2] http://sourceforge.net/p/necessitas/wiki/How to write Qt apps for
AndroidCheers,
BogDan.