Future Prospects of Qt?
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Hi @GCDX, can you be more specific? Which industries are your interested in?
In general, I think Qt has a bright future. Examples:
- The Qt Company is heavily investing in the Qt Automotive Suite, so we'll soon see Qt in cars everywhere.
- Data science is one of the fastest growing fields today, and Python is one of the most-used languages in this field. Qt for Python makes Qt easily accessible to data scientists.
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Hi,
To add to @JKSH there's also the investment done in the medical field for software certification.
The Functional Safety Certification which makes Qt usable in safety related devices for railway software, medical devices software and other safety related industries.
And also KDE's software offering that can be used in may fields.
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I'm of the oppinion, that, would the QtCompany maintain precompiled QtLibaries for the latest RaspberryPi release, it would give Qt a huge popularity boost.
I understand why they don't, there are already 8ish precompiled versions that need to be maintained. But come on ;-)
Be aware of the Qt Code of Conduct, when posting : https://forum.qt.io/topic/113070/qt-code-of-conduct
Q: What's that?
A: It's blue light.
Q: What does it do?
A: It turns blue. -
Usually the lead troll (aka Lars Knoll) lays down the prospects of the library at big events. I think the most recent one is https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=I-_7XHXHfMg
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I'm of the oppinion, that, would the QtCompany maintain precompiled QtLibaries for the latest RaspberryPi release, it would give Qt a huge popularity boost.
I understand why they don't, there are already 8ish precompiled versions that need to be maintained. But come on ;-)
@J.Hilk said in Future Prospects of Qt?:
I understand why they don't,
Could you please describe the reasons? I don't know
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Take a look at this successful integration report for the qt5 repository dev branch. Now multiply it by 3 since you also have the current stable and LTS branches. In that report you can also see each submodules, which means that all of these also have regular integrations going on for all the aforementioned branches (with qtwebengine being an exception as chromium is way more restrictive about the platform it can be build and run on).
This gives you a rough idea about the pressure under which the CI already is.
This doesn't take into account the pre-built binaries that are created for:
- Linux x64
- macOS x64
- Android armv7, x64 for Linux, macOS and Windows
- iOS x64
- Windows MinGW, Visual Studio 2015, 2017
All the pre-built releases are tested by humans to ensure they are working fine.
Now to add support for the RaspberryPi:
- Which version of the Pi ? All of them have different GPUs if they have one
- Which architecture ? Some are 32 and other 64 bits
- If for the Pi, why not the BeagleBoneBlack ? Tinkerboard ? imx6 ? imx7 ?
Interested in AI ? www.idiap.ch
Please read the Qt Code of Conduct - https://forum.qt.io/topic/113070/qt-code-of-conduct -
Take a look at this successful integration report for the qt5 repository dev branch. Now multiply it by 3 since you also have the current stable and LTS branches. In that report you can also see each submodules, which means that all of these also have regular integrations going on for all the aforementioned branches (with qtwebengine being an exception as chromium is way more restrictive about the platform it can be build and run on).
This gives you a rough idea about the pressure under which the CI already is.
This doesn't take into account the pre-built binaries that are created for:
- Linux x64
- macOS x64
- Android armv7, x64 for Linux, macOS and Windows
- iOS x64
- Windows MinGW, Visual Studio 2015, 2017
All the pre-built releases are tested by humans to ensure they are working fine.
Now to add support for the RaspberryPi:
- Which version of the Pi ? All of them have different GPUs if they have one
- Which architecture ? Some are 32 and other 64 bits
- If for the Pi, why not the BeagleBoneBlack ? Tinkerboard ? imx6 ? imx7 ?
@SGaist I see the point; yes, there are a bunch of combinations.
However, given the bet of Qt company on embedded devices with the Qt Automotive Suite and Qt for Automation for instance, adding a couple of devices/targets might be an investment on product adoption. Perhaps Qt company may engage support (money, people, etc.) from involved parties (i.e. Raspberry Pi foundation, GENIVI Alliance, other board manufacturers(
And for the questions you wondered, just my 2 cents:
Which version of the Pi ?
I'd choose the Pi 3 Model B and Pi Zero W
Which architecture ? Some are 32 and other 64 bits
Given the models above, you just cover both 32 and 64 bits with them
If for the Pi, why not the BeagleBoneBlack ? Tinkerboard ? imx6 ? imx7 ?
Yes, that's another good point. I guess the answer may come from searching the forum about the most asked platforms. In particular, if any, I'd say i.MX6 (i.e. Variscite already supports Qt on the DART-6UL board)
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AFAIK the automotive offering comes with Boot2Qt which will automatically bake a Linux distro with Qt and deploy it to target board. When doing embedded development, people tend to compile everything themselves anyway. Actually having to follow a guide on how to cross-compile Qt for Raspberry Pi is a good exercise to train for more "hardcore" embedded development.
I'm not saying I'm against something prebuilt for Raspbian, but I don't think it's a high priority target,. And, as Sam already pointed out - Qt team already has to go through considerable effort to prepare current package roster.
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@SGaist I see the point; yes, there are a bunch of combinations.
However, given the bet of Qt company on embedded devices with the Qt Automotive Suite and Qt for Automation for instance, adding a couple of devices/targets might be an investment on product adoption. Perhaps Qt company may engage support (money, people, etc.) from involved parties (i.e. Raspberry Pi foundation, GENIVI Alliance, other board manufacturers(
And for the questions you wondered, just my 2 cents:
Which version of the Pi ?
I'd choose the Pi 3 Model B and Pi Zero W
Which architecture ? Some are 32 and other 64 bits
Given the models above, you just cover both 32 and 64 bits with them
If for the Pi, why not the BeagleBoneBlack ? Tinkerboard ? imx6 ? imx7 ?
Yes, that's another good point. I guess the answer may come from searching the forum about the most asked platforms. In particular, if any, I'd say i.MX6 (i.e. Variscite already supports Qt on the DART-6UL board)
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