[Librem-5-dev] A few questions about development

[rinigus]

Hi Chris,

I'll address only Qt questions, since I am developing in that.

2a. Is it expected that Qt developers will use the KDE Kirigami
> framework (or some other framework) to make apps look/work properly on
> the device?
>
> 2b. If a specific framework is expected, can you provide any useful
> links to examples of how to install it in a dev environment?   (Or, even
> tell me if a certain Linux distro is a good one to use as it is easy to
> set up the development environment.   When it comes to development
> resources, I have a ton of hardware (and the power bill to prove it!),
> but not a ton of time. ;)
>

I'm porting maps solution (Pure Maps and OSM Scout Server) which were
developed for Sailfish with its Silica. Originally, I ported it to plain
QtControls, but now, to get better support for mobile, I am working on
porting it to Kirigami. That would allow to support swipes between pages,
have standardized controls, and support convergence (mobile and desktop in
a single app).

There are few warnings regarding Kirigami though. Its changing fast and you
may hit some bugs (several bugs from the version that I had on my linux
distro were fixed already). So, they suggest to use flatpak for development
as well. See https://docs.plasma-mobile.org/AppDevelopment.html , section
with "local building and testing".

However, having flatpak packaging seems to be beneficial in many respects,
as Dorota mentioned. It does allow you to bundle all required libs that are
not in the flatpak SDK simply and use the versions you are confident about.
In my case, its a list of libs and QML plugins.

Obviously, having some kind of recommended Qt framework would be great. For
example, if we all use Kirigami, that would help to create some critical
mass and get issues fixed faster with each other help. But, while I am
optimistic regarding Kirigami, I haven't finished porting yet and cannot
show full product working on it. So, don't consider it as a vote of
confidence regarding it. Hopefully, that will change though.

Rinigus
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://lists.community.puri.sm/pipermail/librem-5-dev/attachments/20190123/e9a1e03b/attachment.html>