Hi all. With 2.8 beta out of the door it's not yet time to call the release done, but we can already spend a few brain cycles on what should happen after 2.8 final.
A few ideas are already sort of fixed, a few completely open for discussion, some need feedback from users and the developer crowd. 1. Time line: We'd like to stick to the usual 4-month cycle, putting the target date for the Final somewhere to November. Reason: The current cycle setup works well, no need to change. Also November is generally a rather nice month for releases, due to its distance to holiday seasons. 2. 2.8 + 0.1 makes 3.0, as we use base-9 for version numbers ;-). More seriously, we'd like to make the point that with Android and iOS support we have a new "phase". At the same time we'd like to stiffen the rules on core compatibility to make it easier for 3rdparty plugin developers to keep their plugins working. Current thinking is to aim at source and binary compatibility within a minor series (i.e. 3.0 and 3.0.1 could be interchanged, but not, say, 3.0 and 3.1). 3. We will focus on building of Creator itself with Qt 5. The plan is to keep it compilable as long as painlessly possible with Qt 4. I think by then (almost a year after Qt 5 came out) the point has been made that it is possible to keep a code base of the size of Creator without much pain compilable with Qt 4 and Qt 5 at the same time. It's time to get access to the Qt 5-only goodies now. This would also make it possible to upstream generally useful parts from Creator into Qt again which is currently hindered by the "don't play with Qt 4" policies. 4. "committed" contents: Essentially tying up loose ends. There are obvious gaps in Android and iOS support that needs to be closed, and we have a couple of other "in progress" or currently "experimental" items (multi-monitor support, lldb debugger support) that should be finished. 5. "committed" maintenance: In preparation of the potential compatibility promises the core interfaces need some auditing, and possibly re-shuffling and "real" documentation. In addition there should be general performance audit/profiling including fixing the most glaring issues that will come up. Not-so-fixed: 6. Use of C++11. There are quite a few goodies in the language nowadays that look very interesting. We should identify a few ones that would really help us, and double check with the compilers we need to support which ones we could actually use, and then decide on whether we should, or not. For that, input on which compilers people actually use, and which they really need to use to compile Creator would be beneficial. 7. wip/clang: Progress would be highly desirable. It's unlikely though, to get this anywhere close "production ready" in this period, so the current thinking is to bring it in a state where it's user-configurable, and perhaps have that configurable per-language, so that it can get some exposure in the Real World for, say, C projects, where the performance impact is less visible. Andre' _______________________________________________ Qt-creator mailing list [email protected] http://lists.qt-project.org/mailman/listinfo/qt-creator
