Linux 5.11 Finally Flushes Out Its Qt4 Code For Configuring Kernel Builds UI

Linux 5.11's Kconfig build configuration updates are bringing some long overdue improvements to its "Qconf" Qt toolkit user interface option for configuring Linux kernel builds.

Qt 5.0 was released eight years ago and earlier this month Qt 6.0 was christened. Most software was converted from Qt4 to Qt5 years ago but the Linux Kconfig code when firing up the Qt interface has retained support going back to Qt4. But for Linux 5.11 that is being removed to now focus on providing just a Qt5 interface (and presumably Qt 6, in due course) alongside the other Kconfig user interfaces from ncurses to GTK.

Dropping the Qt4 support as we move into 2021 frees up testing efforts by those working on the Kconfig code as well as finally allowing them to focus on using new features of Qt5. The initial improvement made for Linux 5.11 is making use of Qt5's "new" signal/slot connection syntax that allows for compile-time checking the validity of a connection. Prior to Qt5 with the updated syntax that checking could only be done at run-time and led previously to some legitimate bugs within the Kconfig Qt code.

The Qt code improvement was merged yesterday as the bulk of the Kconfig updates this cycle.