Porting Software To Qt5, KDE Frameworks 5

[phoronix]

Phoronix: Porting Software To Qt5, KDE Frameworks 5

For those interested in bringing their software (or helping in port open-source software) to KDE Frameworks 5 and Qt5, Aleix Pol has written a semi-detailed overview covering the general steps involved...

http://www.phoronix.com/vr.php?view=MTcyNjE

[eydee]

He forgets to mention in that blog post that QSystemTryIcon is broken in QT5 and therefore porting any application that has a tray icon to QT5 is a no-go. Considering how many applications use this feature I wonder how QT5 can even be released as stable.

[mgraesslin]

He forgets to mention in that blog post that QSystemTryIcon is broken in QT5 and therefore porting any application that has a tray icon to QT5 is a no-go. Considering how many applications use this feature I wonder how QT5 can even be released as stable.

In what way is QSystemTrayIcon broken? I did some work on it for Qt 5.3 and are not aware of any breakage.

[eydee]

In what way is QSystemTrayIcon broken? I did some work on it for Qt 5.3 and are not aware of any breakage.

It only works under KDE. Here's the bug: https://bugreports.qt-project.org/br...mentOrder=desc

[eydee]

And here's the other show-stopping bug: https://bugreports.qt-project.org/browse/QTBUG-31762

(Sorry for double post, I can't edit the previous one as I can't even see it until a moderator approves it.)

[Damian_Ivanov]

It is not

In what way is QSystemTrayIcon broken? I did some work on it for Qt 5.3 and are not aware of any breakage.

Yes, absolutely, it is not broken, and mgraesslin is kwin maintainer btw...

[mgraesslin]

And here's the other show-stopping bug: https://bugreports.qt-project.org/browse/QTBUG-31762

well bugs in QSystemTrayIcon can hardly be called show-stoppers. Anyway that's a Unity issue: Unity needs to provide a PlatformTheme plugin and replace the x-embedd based icon by a status notifier. That's what we do in Plasma - Unity could even just use our code to do it.

[FLHerne]

well bugs in QSystemTrayIcon can hardly be called show-stoppers. Anyway that's a Unity issue: Unity needs to provide a PlatformTheme plugin and replace the x-embedd based icon by a status notifier. That's what we do in Plasma - Unity could even just use our code to do it.

Since the bug reports linked above by eydee have comments reporting breakage on LXDE, XFCE, KDE4, GNOME (2 and 3), Unity, OS X, Cinnamon, trayer and awesomewm, that simply isn't a credible assertion.

It's broken here with trayer, no Unity in sight. You can't break Qt5 for every systemtray that isn't plasma-next and then say it's their problem.

[schmidtbag]

I'm not sure who is in the right or wrong here, and not that it's really my place but butt in, but... QSystemTrayIcon is clearly designed for a Qt based environment, which means it is definitely understandable why it works fine in KDE and maybe not so perfectly elsewhere. On the other hand, while Unity has plenty of problems, it isn't such a poorly designed environment that such a feature should fail. In other words, if QsystemTrayIcon is designed to work in more than just KDE, it shouldn't have issues in such a popular environment. If Unity is the one and only environment (including across other OSes) that fails, then the Unity devs are the ones that need to fix the issue.

[FLHerne]

QSystemTrayIcon is clearly designed for a Qt based environment, which means it is definitely understandable why it works fine in KDE and maybe not so perfectly elsewhere.

One of the main selling points of Qt is that it's cross-platform:
QSystemTrayIcon isn't 'clearly designed for a Qt based environment', it's the Qt framework's way to create a system-tray icon on Linux, OSX, Windows, and whatever other Qt-supported platforms have system-trays.

And re. a previous point that I forgot to respond to, in the real world shipping a stable release that has known, conspicuous glitches for the majority of your customers isn't an option. You just can't do that. So yes, this bug is definitely a 'showstopper' when it comes to releasing a Qt5 port.