Heads up: How to set your default graphics engine in Qt-4.8.0
Since one hour ago, Qt-4.8.0 is in Gentoo portage tree. New major release so lots of new (or broken) stuff. The most important feature in this release is the integration of a new eselect module. This module will allow you to set your default graphics engine without the need to recompile Qt (x11-libs/qt-gui to be precise) from scratch. So, provided you have qt-gui-4.8.0 installed, you should be able to use the eselect module as follows:
hwoarang@mystical ~$ eselect qtgraphicssystem list
Available Qt Graphics Systems: [1] native [2] opengl [3] raster *
(note: if you have x11-libs/qt-openvg installed, one more option should be available)
Simply select your graphics system of preference, and then logout and login again.
hwoarang@mystical ~$ eselect qtgraphicssystem set 2 Setting opengl as your active Qt Graphics System... done Please logout for changes to take effect.
Thanks to Alex(wired) for the eselect module implementation.
Enjoy ;-)
Where is Qt-4.8?
It’s been more than a year since I wrote something about Qt. This is mainly because I retired myself from the team and focused on other teams that needed urgent attention. However, lately I had some spare time to contribute to Qt again and update 4.9999 ebuilds to a working state. Furthermore, I pushed some initial ebuilds for Qt-4.8.0_beta1 and Qt-4.8.9999. Both sets are merged successfully on my testing boxes so they should by ready for you to test them. Qt-creator-2.3.0_rc is located in qting-edge overlay as well, but because it requires >=Qt-4.7.4 it makes no sense to commit it to portage. So if you want to use it, then you have to use >=Qt-4.7.9999 ebuilds :)
If you have any problems, please use forums[1] to report them or open a bug on https://bugs.gentoo.org.
[1]http://forums.gentoo.org/viewtopic-t-730187.html
How to build and use QmlDesigner on Qt-Creator
I must admit that I haven’t took care of qt-creator ebuilds lately and this is because I simply couldn’t test them. I was using Qt-4.6.9999 live ebuilds whilst live qt-creator wanted explicitly Qt-4.7. Yesterday I finally updates my Qt installation to Qt-4.7 and it was about time to start working on qt-creator ebuilds again.
Qt-4.7 now brings Qt-declarative module which allows you to create flexible applications based on QML language. A designer plugin is already implemented on qt-creator in order to help you quickly develop such applications.
Unfortunately, this plugins requires private headers for Qt4 library so I needed to edit qt-{core,gui,script,declarative} ebuilds to install those private headers. Qt upstream inserted a special configure switch to use when you build your Qt4 library (-developer-build) but I decided that rebuilding the whole Qt library for that was too much.
What I did was to introduce a new use flag ‘private-headers‘ on those ebuilds. So if you want to have a fully working qml+designer support on qt-creator do the following:
edit /etc/make.conf and add private-headers use flag on USE variable. Then run
USE=”qml” emerge qt-creator
Before merging qt-creator, portage will rebuild qt-{core,gui,script,declarative} ebuilds in order to have those private headers installed.
Raster to be the default Qt4 graphics engine @ Gentoo Linux
In our latest meeting[1] we decided to test and enable raster[2] use flag by default in Qt4. In order to achieve this, we kindly ask you to set this use flag on qt-gui and test as many Qt4 apps as you can. If you don’t feel like rebuilding qt-gui, you can simply append
-graphicssystem raster when launching a Qt4 application like this:
qmpdclient -graphicssystem raster
You may also post your results on the respective topic on Gentoo forums[3]
Your feedback is much appreciated.
On behalf of the Gentoo Qt team, thank you
[1] http://gitorious.org/gentoo-qt/pages/Meeting20100219
[2] http://labs.trolltech.com/blogs/2008/10/22/so-long-and-thanks-for-the-blit/
[3] http://forums.gentoo.org/viewtopic-t-816758.html
Time to say goodbye to an old friend: Qt3
First of all, Happy new year :). I hope 2010 to bring more joy and happiness to you and your family.
This post is a small notice for those who haven’t been informed yet about the Qt3 removal schedule on Gentoo Linux.
That’s been said, you should consider upgrade to Qt4 ( which is unlikely you haven’t already ) and upgrade your Qt3 applications to the Qt4 respective versions as well ( if possible ).
There is also a tracker on gentoo bugzilla in case you need to track the Qt3 removal progress or help us by filling related bugs ;)
This work is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-Share Alike 3.0 Greece License
