Qt for Android better than ever before

#1

Post by jcelerier » Thu, Oct 10, 2019, 1:54 PM UTC

Qt for Android better than ever before
kdab.com

Re: Qt for Android better than ever before

#2

Post by benmcnelly » Thu, Oct 10, 2019, 2:56 PM UTC

That is great, love it how sometimes things like this are stumbled upon by working outside what you are used to.

Re: Qt for Android better than ever before

#3

Post by tipsysquid » Thu, Oct 10, 2019, 2:59 PM UTC

I've been getting more and more interested with qt development. As a linux user, I'm exhausted from the bloat and cycle stealing electron apps ( with VSCode being a notable exception to this rule). But more recently, the idea of writing one app in Qt, running it everywhere between Android, a Librem 5, and desktop platfoms is really exciting.

Re: Qt for Android better than ever before

#4

Post by neogodless » Thu, Oct 10, 2019, 2:59 PM UTC

For those new to hearing about Qt / Qt for Android:

- https://doc.qt.io/qt-5/android.html

- https://www.qt.io/

> Qt for Android enables you to run Qt 5 applications on devices with Android v4.1 (API level 16) or later.

> One framework. One codebase. Any platform.

Re: Qt for Android better than ever before

#5

Post by allenskd » Thu, Oct 10, 2019, 3:06 PM UTC

I don't know how Qt & Android fare these days... I know it was quite a hassle to create background services when I first tried to get into it and there was no definitive answer as I think it was still on the roadmap to add it (perhaps?).

Qt is amazing and so is QML. I still found QML JavaScript engine utilizing a lot of memory back then as well and I don't know if it has been fine-tuned these days.

Re: Qt for Android better than ever before

#6

Post by _l4jh » Thu, Oct 10, 2019, 3:16 PM UTC

Qt for Android has always looked pretty good but I never see it used. Could someone link a few real-world apps developed with Qt for Android?

Re: Qt for Android better than ever before

#7

Post by kuschku » Thu, Oct 10, 2019, 3:29 PM UTC

allenskd wrote: post #5

I don't know how Qt & Android fare these days... I know it was quite a hassle to create background services when I first tried to get into it and there was no definitive answer as I think it was still on the roadmap to add it (perhaps?). Qt is amazing and so is QML. I still found QML JavaScript engine utilizing a lot of memory back then as well and I don't know if it has been fine-tuned these days.

Even with native Java/Kotlin on Android it's pretty hard to reliably run background service, if not to say impossible (most manufacturers make it impossible, and even on Google devices it's impossible on Marshmallow).

Re: Qt for Android better than ever before

#8

Post by oever » Thu, Oct 10, 2019, 3:34 PM UTC

allenskd wrote: post #5

I don't know how Qt & Android fare these days... I know it was quite a hassle to create background services when I first tried to get into it and there was no definitive answer as I think it was still on the roadmap to add it (perhaps?). Qt is amazing and so is QML. I still found QML JavaScript engine utilizing a lot of memory back then as well and I don't know if it has been fine-tuned these days.

Qt6 will have faster and lower footprint QML because JavaScript will be optional.

Also QML will gain type checking.

Re: Qt for Android better than ever before

#9

Post by Ididntdothis » Thu, Oct 10, 2019, 3:34 PM UTC

_l4jh wrote: post #6

Qt for Android has always looked pretty good but I never see it used. Could someone link a few real-world apps developed with Qt for Android?

Same here. Would like to see some real world apps and ideally also the code.

Re: Qt for Android better than ever before

#10

Post by pepijndevos » Thu, Oct 10, 2019, 3:37 PM UTC

I have in the past developed a fairly large (proprietary) Qt application that used the same codebase on Linux, Windows, and Android. I would say Windows and Android are tied for compile hell.

This update looks really neat, and may solve some problems for some people. But personally my biggest gripe with Qt is qmake.

When you are doing Android, lots of resources assume Gradle, and lots of Qt stuff assumes qmake. Neither is ideal if you're dealing with other libraries like gstreamer, or even worse: proprietary libraries compiled using an old NDK.

So I ended up writing my whole build system in cmake, which made builds on Windows and Linux a lot saner, but made Android a living hell. I'd love to see better support in Qt for actual sane build systems you can use with real world third-party libraries, because qmake is not it in my experience.