Nokia has issued a release candidate for version 1.0 of the Qt SDK and has published some details about the release roadmap. The SDK will be released with Qt Creator 2.0 and Qt 4.6.3.
Qt is an open source development toolkit that simplifies cross-platform application development. After obtaining Qt in a 2008 acquisition of Trolltech, Nokia relicensed the toolkit under the LPGL so that it could be used to develop proprietary applications at no cost. Nokia has largely focused on improving the toolkit's suitability for rapid mobile development. It can be used to build applications that will run across all three major desktop operating systems and several mobile platforms, including Symbian and MeeGo.
The Qt SDK is intended to be a single installable package that supplies a complete stack for building mobile and desktop applications with Qt so that developers don't have to independently install and configure all of the individual components. It also has several new features, such as mobile simulators. We looked at the SDK last month when the first beta was released.
Unfortunately, the next major version of Qt will not be ready in time for the initial 1.0 release of the SDK. Qt 4.7 is currently in the beta stage and is now scheduled to get a second beta before a release candidate is made available later this summer. Qt SDK 1.0 and Qt Creator 2.0 are on track to be released sooner, though the exact date hasn't yet been made public.
The decision to include Qt 4.6.3 in the first official release of the Qt SDK instead of 4.7 is a bit disappointing, because 4.7 introduces some great new features for mobile development, including an impressive declarative user interface framework called Qt Quick that is ideal for building touchscreen applications.
In conformance with the new release schedule, Nokia is going to remove the Qt Quick visual design tools from Qt Creator 2.0. The company says that the cut features will be brought back in a 2.1 release of Creator that will coincide with the launch of Qt 4.7.
I've been using Qt Creator 2.0 and Qt 4.7 for the past several months by compiling the code from the version control repository. I ported several of my own Qt applications, including one that the Ars staff uses internally for interacting with the site's content management system, and I'm impressed with Qt Quick as well as some of the other new features in the toolkit. Nokia has moved Qt forward considerably since its acquisition of Trolltech and has continued to push forward the toolkit's original vision of productive development and top-notch portability.
Source: arstechnica
