The Register®

Original URL: http://www.theregister.co.uk/2012/08/29/qt_android/

Heartbroken app-maker Qt sneaks into Android's bed

The library that's too cute to kill

By Bill Ray

Posted in Developer, 29th August 2012 08:21 GMT

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The effort towards a Qt library for Android is progressing, with a fourth and final alpha release being sent out the door – despite confidence in the platform having steadily eroded since Nokia dumped [1] it.

Qt is a library of cross-platform APIs which enables even complicated apps, such as VLC's VideoLAN, to run across operating systems. Nokia bought the owning company, Trolltech [2], back in 2008, then dumped the technology earlier this month. The move left Qt with an uncertain future, but seemingly a future which includes Android.

Qt ended up with Digia [3], who took on the 125 Nokia engineers still working on the project. Digia promised to keep the momentum going, with a new version of Qt scheduled to come out later this month, but that's for desktop systems, not phones.

Qt-on-Android is a community effort, developing an Android library as an open source project under the moniker "Necessitas [4]", and optimistically promising to deliver on Nokia's dream of having Qt apps running on a billion devices, though the entreaties to get involved [5] do smack a little of desperation:

You have to ask yourself which option is better for you:
  • to be selfless and to spend some of your time (or your money) to make the things you love better and to keep them free for everybody...
  • or to be selfish, forget about Qt and start learning some crappy closed source C# or iFramework instead which, some day (sooner or later), will die with the *ONLY* company behind it?"

One could learn a bit of Java, or Objective C, betting that Google and Apple will outlast one's professional career, but why bother when Qt Alpha 4 can (we're assured [6]) be installed with a couple of clicks and provide cross-platform programmability? ®