Re: [Flightgear-devel] QtQuick UI - current status + plans

[James T. <jam...@kd...>]

> On 22 Jan 2018, at 11:01, Stuart Buchanan <stu...@gm...> wrote:
> 
> On Mon, Jan 22, 2018 at 9:16 AM, James Turner wrote:
>> My impression is that if you make a Canvas UI option, the Qt based solution
>> will be still-born almost by default - because I won’t be able to create any
>> enthusiasm or interest around it. Maybe I’m wrong about that, but for sure
>> Canvas based approaches attract a lot more support and man-power very
>> easily.  And my guess each person who works on the Canvas based Ui is one
>> fewer who might ever help out with the Qt based one. (That is not probably
>> 100% true, but I guess there is some correlation)
> 
> I don't see why that would be the case.

Well let’s say the Qt UI is 1/4 of my time per week spent on FG (might be a little more, but I have lots of other things to work on), vs Thorsten’s time and 4 or 8 enthusiastic people he can recruit - I’m obviously going to fall massively behind in comparison - within three or six months they might build a complete replacement UI.

> 
> I take it that fulfilling the dependencies for Windows developers is
> straightforward?
> We already have a disparity that most developers are on Linux, so we
> should ensure
> that we've got a well-documented path for Windows developers to follow.
> 

Few different options there, but the easiest IMO is to use the binary installer, since it has the most testing. Either the online or offline version, you do need to skip the nonsense about making a Qt.io <http://qt.io/> account but after that you can install / update everything forever. (The Qt Company has a lot of problems with commercial users very loosely complying with GPL/LGPL but their response was to make the installer rather in-your-face)

Here’s a direct link to the current installers:  (if you prefer offline they’re in a sibling directory I think)

	https://download.qt.io/archive/online_installers/3.0/ <https://download.qt.io/archive/online_installers/3.0/>

This is what we use on Jenkins, including on Linux since it means we don’t touch the system Qt at all. 
	
Of course if you’re hardcore you build from source, actually quite easy on any platform, but a slight workout for your CPUs :D

Kind regards,
James