by: Attila Csipa

One of the big changes PR1.2 brought us is official Qt support in the form of Q4.6 in the Nokia SDK and repositories. This change affects all applications depending on Qt currently in extras-devel. We had some talks with Qt/Nokia folks about Qt-related repository changes in Maemo 5 (triggered by aforementioned PR1.2 and potentially again later on by updates to Qt or related components).
One of the big changes PR1.2 brought us is official Qt support in the form of Q4.6 in the Nokia SDK and repositories. This change affects all applications depending on Qt currently in extras-devel. We had some talks with Qt/Nokia folks about Qt-related repository changes in Maemo 5 (triggered by aforementioned PR1.2 and potentially again later on by updates to Qt or related components).

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Here is the short summary:

1. remove qt4-maemo5 (4.6) after PR1.2
2. upload Qt 4.7 snapshots as qt4-experimental to extras-devel afterwards
3. as soon as 4.6 QtMobility is released, get those packages to the nokia-apps repository
4. remove 4.6 QtMobility from extras-devel
5. maybe upload new QtMobility packages to extras-devel, but only for qt4-experimental (4.7) and with 'experimental' in the package name
6. maintainers of bindings and extensions to Qt are encouraged to follow the same nomenclature in their package names (i.e. using experimental in the name if depending on qt4-experimental)
7. use a Provides/Replaces/etc libqt4-maemo5 clause in the qt4-experimental packages (Qt4.7 packages should be binary compatible with the current 4.6 ones) so the packages can be deprecated peacefully
8. QML/declarative will be released as part of Qt4.7 (so qt4-experimental only, no 4.6.2/PR1.2 support)

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Have a nice day !




Link: Original article.

U-huh...

What does that mean for my current Qt apps currently in Extras-Devel? How do I make them 'easier' installable?

You don't need to do anything, just rename your libqt4-maemo5-* dependencies to libqt4-* after PR1.2 has been released. You don't HAVE to, though, but in that case you will be automatically linked against the bleeding edge Qt4.7 that will appear in extras-devel.

Basically, the libqt4-maemo5-* package names are deprecated. Use libqt4-experimental-* if you need Qt4.7 features, or libqt4-* if you want Qt4.6. Qt4.5 will no longer be supported after the release of PR1.2

i do have to giggle a bit at the phrase
Brought us?

Well, I know that after PR1.2 is going to be released there will be peace on earth and everything. The question is what do I do until then? Will the same apply to MADDE and scratchbox users?

Technically this is just a naming change that coincides with the PR1.2 release. In the vein of 'if it's FUBARd, let's at least do something useful in the meantime'. This new nomenclature reflects far better what's going on, which packages are bleeding edge, and which ones that should go to PR in the end. It has no bearing on 'what happens until PR1.2 is out' (that, unlike the naming, is sadly completely out of our hands).

Formally, not much (=anything) changes apart from the name, the procedures/rules are exactly the same.

PS. This also applies to the Python bindings as well. I just talked to the PySide guys, so we will have the same nomenclature python-qt4 and pyside for 'stable' (=PR) packages, and python-qt4-experimental + pyside-experimental for those that depend on the libqt4-experimental branch.

I wish you got me there, but sadly, it really is just a typing error. I have no idea when the release will be made.