Hi Everyone.
A few of us have had side conversations about the transition of Subsurface from
Qt 5 to Qt 6 as the default toolkit.
Given that upstream just released Qt 6.10.2 this may seem overdue - yet on the
flip side, the newest Ubuntu desktop LTS version (24.04) ships with a version
of Qt 6 (6.4) that is still missing critical modules that we need (e.g.,
QtLocation). The timing of this is... challenging.
Here's a bit of what we have, what the challenges are, and where we are trying
to go. Help and input welcome...
The Qt 6 port is missing a few things. Most importantly printing. We are
switching to QLiteHtml for the user manual and printing (since QtWebKit is no
longer supported in Qt 6. But the printing part is still work in progress.
There is some work from Robert but he definitely needs help.
The integration of QML and the Qt backend code has changed quite dramatically
and so far none of the core developers have managed to actually get a
Subsurface-mobile build with Qt 6 running. The amount of work to do this is so
massive that we have discussed moving away from QML completely for the mobile
app. I've played with creating an HTML/JS app (and if you go to
https://cloud.subsurface-divelog.org <https://cloud.subsurface-divelog.org/>
you'll get the first tiny bit of that web app as new user interface to cloud
storage).
As I mentioned, shifting the Linux builds to Qt 6 is a major pain as each
distro is on their own slow walk to Qt 6. We aren't alone in Qt 5 apps that
haven't ported, yet. We really want at least Qt 6.8 as target as that seems to
have a mature enough QtLocation for our maps to work. One way to do this is to
simply not have Qt 6 versions for the older distros.
For Ubuntu that would mean 24.04 LTS (and earlier) stay on the Qt 5 build, and
25.10 and 26.04 (the next LTS which should come out in a few months) will be on
Qt 6.
Debian Bookworm is on Qt 6.4, Trixie on 6.8, so we'd do something similar
there.
Fedora 42 has Qt 6.9, Fedora 43 has Qt 6.10, so those are easy.
For macOS we already have a Qt 6 version that some people are running.
For Windows I am working on a native MSVC build with Qt 6.8. That's making good
progress.
As we are adding test builds with Qt 6, it would be incredibly helpful if
people would start using those. And of course provide feedback on things that
aren't working.
And of course, volunteers to help with the printing port would also be amazing.
Not to mention QML for Subsurface-mobile.
Thanks
/D
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