Qt 4.5 hits the (virtual) shelves

Today Qt Software released Qt 4.5.0 and Qt Creator 1.0.0, the culmination of almost a year’s development effort since Qt 4.4.0 was released last May. For the impatient among you, the new release can be downloaded here.

The 4.5.0 release contains a myriad of new features, bug fixes and performance improvements. Many of these are a result of the feedback we have received from you, the community of Qt users.  Your continued support and feedback is a big part of what makes Qt such a great product.

In the coming weeks, we’ll track the known issues for this release here. If you find something that isn’t already on this list, please report it to us so that we can make Qt even better next time around.

I won’t go into the new features in detail – that has been done by others already. Instead I’ll show you some of the people who made Qt 4.5.0 and Qt Creator 1.0.0 happen, Qt Software’s hard-working Oslo, Berlin and Brisbane development teams.

I’m sure that by now many of you have noticed that the name at the top of this blog is not the one that you are accustomed to seeing on announcements of Qt releases, so I guess I’d better introduce myself.

Four years ago I joined Trolltech’s Brisbane office as a QA Engineer and Release Manager for Qtopia (now Qt Extended).  Since then, I’ve been working to improve the quality of Qtopia and to increase the level of automation in the testing and release processes.

The opportunity to become Qt’s Release Manager arose when it was decided that Thiago Macieira would move to other duties in the Qt Software team.  Thiago has done a fantastic job of co-ordinating releases during the Qt 4.3 and Qt 4.4 series and in the lead-up to Qt 4.5.0.  Those are some big shoes to fill.

Six weeks ago I boarded a Qantas flight in Brisbane, bound for Oslo.  My mission was to:

* learn everything I could about how Qt releases are made,
* make sure 4.5.0 made it out on time, and
* develop a plan for how Qt releases will be done in the future.

With today’s release of Qt 4.5.0, you can see that the first two goals have been achieved.

The results of the third item will start to become visible over the coming months. Already, it is clear that the recent addition of the LGPL to Qt’s licensing model will enable us to make some significant improvements and simplifications in how we package and deliver Qt.

Sadly, my time in Oslo is almost over.  Although I have experienced many differences between Brisbane and Oslo (not least being the difference between 42 degrees and -14 degrees), the things that the Oslo, Berlin, Brisbane and other Qt Software offices have in common have given me a lot of confidence in the future of Qt,  No matter where they are in the world, Qt Software developers have the same spirit of innovation and the same dedication to giving application developers a powerful, flexible and easy to use framework.

In a few days I will leave the chilly Norwegian winter and head back home to Brisbane, where I will begin work on the next Qt release.  For the first time, much of the co-ordination of a Qt release will happen in Brisbane, though the location from which the release machinery is operated is not very important.  As always, the product will be driven forward by the highly-skilled Qt Software developers in Oslo, Brisbane, Berlin and a variety of other places.

We hope you will find Qt 4.5.0 and Qt Creator 1.0.0 useful and we hope you enjoy using them as much as we enjoyed creating them.