Resurrecting a dormant Qt project - Suggestions? / Advice?
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Hello, I'm new to the Qt ecosystem! I've never worked with Qt before, but I am proficient in C++ and absolutely love some of the designs that have been created with this framework.
I'm trying to resurrect a program that started here:
https://github.com/skullandbones/uTmax
And was forked here. Source code and updates are at the very bottom of the page.
https://bmamps.com/v01/home/techie-corner/utracer-utmax/
My goal is to refactor, update, and add to the fork if possible. Is this a good idea for a noob? Is the code even worth my time?
How much time am I looking at to get up to speed? Can I do this as a sole user without complex or expensive licensing? How would you start? Also, there's another version of this written in Visual Basic and another in node.js.Thanks in advance!
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Hi and welcome to the forum.
I'm trying to resurrect a program that started here:
The original project is pretty old and IMHO badly structured... in addition, fixed build folders uploaded on GitHub with dummy files for them to not get skipped as empty folders...
And was forked here. Source code and updates are at the very bottom of the page.
Haven't looked at the fork's source code, but you should definitely get the 64-bit version as the 32-bit version still contains old, deprecated code and depends on Qt 5.10 .
My goal is to refactor, update, and add to the fork if possible. Is this a good idea for a noob? Is the code even worth my time?
It's always worth it if you learn something in the process :)
How much time am I looking at to get up to speed?
Depends on how quick you are able to understand the Qt Framework's specific things and the principle of event driven GUI frameworks in general.
Might take a while to dive into Qt, but since you are not a C++ beginner, it should be possible to handle :-)
For this, have a look at the (awesome) Qt Documentation, which helps a lot:
Start here
then go from there and learn about the core features
- The Meta-Object System
- The Property System (maybe not that important for this project)
- Object Model
- Object Trees & Ownership
- Signals & Slots
Can I do this as a sole user without complex or expensive licensing?
Yes, Qt comes with a community license under (L)GPL (besides the commercial one).
AFAICS the project also usesQCustomPlot(here) which is a 3rd party library that extends Qt and adds functionality to create better (?!) and more detailed scientific plots and graphs.
Don't know how recent all this is.
Also Qt updated the Qt Chart lately (Qt's deprecated module for plots and graphs) and moved it into the freshQtGraphsmodule
Note: Both, QtGraphs and AFAIK QCustomPlot are licensed GPL only, so you might keep that in mind.
Shouldn't make any difference when creating your own fork or contributing to the existing one.Also, there's another version of this written in Visual Basic and another in node.js.
* yuck *
Btw: I would definitely try to transform the project into using CMake (instead of Qt's QMake build system)
