Qt 5.5 Is Packing On New Features, Going Into Feature Freeze Soon

Qt 5.5 is less than one month away from entering its feature freeze. This half-year update to the open-source Qt tool-kit will bring several new features when its scheduled to be officially released in April.

Heikkinen Jani of Digia / The Qt Company sent out a reminder today that Qt 5.5 feature freeze is coming up. Qt 5.5 is set to go into feature freeze on 9 February and at which point Qt 5.5 will be branched from the Git dev branch. Following the freeze and branching, the Qt 5.5 Alpha is expected on 17 February, Qt 5.5 Beta on 12 March, Qt 5.5 RC1 on 14 April, and if all goes well the final release on 28 April. Given that Qt5 delays have commonly happened in the past, it's possible the Qt 5.5 release could slip into May.

Per the Qt Wiki, some of the new features coming to Qt 5.5 is a neard-based backend for Qt NFC on Linux, QImage support for 8-bit alpha maps and gray-scale formats, finalizing the Bluetooth Low Energy API, Bluetooth Low-Energy Support for Android, and other changes.

From this mailing list post today, it looks like Qt3D 2.0 could be ready for making the Qt 5.5 release.

Stay tuned for more Qt 5.5 news on Phoronix in the weeks ahead.