It’s time to celebrate – Qt 4.6.0 is now available.
You can get all of the packages from the Qt Download Page. Qt 4.6.0 is available as a single source package for all supported platforms and as pre-built binary packages for Windows (Visual Studio 2008 and MinGW builds), Mac OS X (Cocoa and Carbon builds), and Symbian.
You can also find the latest documentation at http://qt.nokia.com/doc/4.6/index.html.
Nine months ago, I sat in an office in Oslo, Norway, writing a blog about the Qt 4.5.0 release (my first as Release Manager) as the snow fell gently, but persistently outside. Today, I’m sitting in a (thankfully air-conditioned) office in Brisbane, Australia, writing a blog about the Qt 4.6.0 release as the 35 degree (Centigrade) sun beats down mercilessly upon everything outside.
That freezing cold day in Oslo seems like a lot more than nine months ago. A lot has changed in the last nine months – not just the environment that I walk through to get to work.
A bunch of new features have reached maturity and found their way into Qt 4.6.0, the port to the Symbian platform has enabled Qt to run on potentially tens of millions of devices, a few more long term projects have started to bear fruit (and will find their way into future version of Qt), and Qt development has been opened up to the community with both the Qt Source Repository and the Qt Bug Tracker going public.
This last item has had a significant and very positive impact on the way we work and on the quality of today’s 4.6.0 release. Qt 4.6.0 has benefitted from around 160 code contributions from members of the community, as well as hundreds of bug reports.
Today is far from the end of the road for Qt 4.6 development however. While the feature set is now complete – the next chance to add significant new features is 4.7.0 – we still intend to continue to improve performance, fix bugs, improve documentation and address feedback from the community in future 4.6.x patch releases. While it hasn’t been possible to address all of the feedback we’ve received so far in time for 4.6.0, Qt’s developers are already busily working towards 4.6.1 and the feedback and contributions from Qt’s community of users is still helping us to improve Qt for all users.
If you find a bug in Qt 4.6.0, please tell us about it so that we can make Qt even better next time around. You can submit a bug report and/or an autotest that demonstrates the bug via the Qt Bug Tracker, or if you know how to fix the bug, you can submit a merge-request to the Qt source repository on http://qt.gitorious.org.
Tradition has it that for a .0 release, we show you the hard-working developers, testers and support staff that made the release happen. Below you can see the folks from the Oslo and Berlin Qt offices photographed outside at the beginning of another cold northern winter, and the folks from the Brisbane Qt office photographed in the canteen with the bright summer sun outside. (Better picture of the Munich team coming soon.)
Despite the geographical distances between our three development groups, something that has really impressed me during the last nine months is how well we’ve all worked together to create Qt 4.6.0, and for that I thank each and every one of the fine ladies and gentlemen pictured below. These are the people who come to work day after day to make Qt such a great framework for application development.
Great job guys and girls. Crack open your favourite celebratory beverage while we wait to see if Norway’s internet is up to the challenge of distributing the biggest Qt release yet….
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43 comments
Thanks for all the effort, Jason, and all the long working hours due to the timezone difference.
My sincere congratulations!
Thank you very much!
Btw, I have two questions regarding the release:
- Which MinGW version does the Windows build contain (and does Phonon for Windows work with it)?
- What do the shirts say in the first picture?
@szotsaki: It doesn’t contain any MinGW, if you want an installer with MinGW, download the Qt SDK. Qt was built against MinGW 4.4 (which you can still get from ftp://ftp.trolltech.com/misc/MinGW-gcc440_1.zip if you totally dislike downloading the SDK). It is a patched MinGW which contains the missing windows header to compile Phonon. So yes, we finally have Phonon support.
@szotsaki: The MinGW version is 4.4, and phonon does work from the pre-built binary package and also works if you build yourself using the patched version of MinGW from ftp://ftp.trolltech.com/misc/MinGW-gcc440_1.zip.
As for the shirts, I’m not entirely sure what they say, but I hope there’s one waiting for me when I visit Oslo next month.
The T-Shirts say “I <Qt> Everywhere”. They were given to Dev Days participants this year.
Well written release announcement.
Looking at the pictures, there are approximatively 100 peoples working on Qt ? O_O
wow ! Am I right ?
Wow. congratuations! Qt 4.6.0 release
Thank you very much for all.
Look forward QGraphics framework + QtWebkit(web item) item and Flash plugin compatabiliy in webkit
Great news, many thanks for your hard work!
@shamaz: I think it’s closer to 150 people now, and slowly growing.
Do you have a link to the Qt 4.6.0 SDK that is built with Visual Studio? This was available for RC1 but I can’t see a link for it on the main download page. Thanks.
Well, considering the pictures aren’t about the Development teams anymore (at least on the Oslo picture, Marketing, Support and Product Planning joined), the correct number would be “close to 250″.
@rec there was never an SDK for Visual Studio, but if you download the Qt for Windows Visual Studio 2008 binary packages in addition to the SDK, you can use it. Make also sure to install the Microsoft Debugging Tools (32 bit)!
Apologies, I meant the binary package. I found a link but it doesn’t seem to be on the main download page. In case anyone else needs it…
http://get.qt.nokia.com/qt/source/qt-win-opensource-4.6.0-vs2008.exe
Hey, that’s cool!
But: As with the Qt4.6-rc1, the QtDBus.framework is missing within both, the qt-sdk-mac-opensource and the qt-mac-cocoa-opensource packages. If there’s reason for this, could you explain?
Seems that I’ll have to rebuild Qt from scratch, if I need dbus support
Congratulations! Qt is quickly improving and I’m amazed at how many more people know it now as compared to 4-5 years ago. However, I think that a stupid factor is limiting its expansion in the business world: you need admin rights to install the SDK (since the 2009.03 release). I don’t know why this is required, but in many large organizations it means that people convinced of the greatness of Qt won’t be able to use or even show it off to colleagues, while that is one of the best way to make pressure and introduce it as a development platform. A bit like convincing kids sometimes is the best way to get the parents to buy something
@rec: it was there all the time, but a bit hidden. it now has its own download option at get.qt.nokia.com
@nicodev Yes, we know about this limitation. This primary reason is hat we need to install the Visual Studio runtime, which requires admin rights as well. We will work on this for future releases.
Congratulations! This should keep me busy for a while
Razvan: it has kept us busy for a long while, so we should swap now
@Thomas: Why the heck do you need D-BUS on Mac? There aren’t any D-BUS tools installed by the OS and nothing uses it. I wouldn’t have bundled QtDBus with the Mac build either since pretty much nobody would have the dependencies necessary to use it.
Oslo, Berlin, Brisbane, Qt 4.6… successfull example of what Globalization allows and can achieve
@Adam: KDE required D-Bus. Since the D-Bus library can be loaded on the fly, it’s possible to ship libQtDBus without having a binary D-Bus dependency.
Is there no (or going to be) a vs2005 open source download?
Were the phonon modules intentionally not built/included in the qt-win-commercial-4.6.0 vs2005 package?
@Adam: Harald is just right, it shouldn’t make problems installing it, whether or not you have libdbus installed. Actually, one of my colleague is a KDE freak :-p, so we use dbus very heavily for IPC (and are very happy with it, too), even on Mac.
@Thomas: probably a mistake. We switched machines that build the Mac binary packages and the new one probably doesn’t have D-Bus installed. Would you mind creating a task at http://bugreports.qt.nokia.com, Qt, component Packaging, about this?
We’ll address it for 4.6.1.
Two Phonon related comments:
1) Were the Phonon libs intentionally left out of the Linux binary SDK package?
2) The “qmusicplayer” example project does not compile on the Mac (installed with the binary SDK package). If you change the way the headers are included (#include “audiooutput.h” instead of #include ) it will work.
Thanks!
Does 4.6 come with a Windows runtime package?
@Carina: No, but the Qt SDK does, because it is needed to run the MSVC-built Qt Creator in the otherwise MinGW-based SDK.
@Thomas: Which version of Mac OS are you using? We just retested the qt-mac-cocoa-opensource package on a MacBook Pro running Snow Leopard and the QtDBus.framework directory appears normal.
Can you have a look in the installer log for any error messages?
I just upgraded from 4.5 to 4.6 today. When I try to build my project (on Macintosh), I get the following in the “Compile Output” window.
Running build steps for project Scorecerer…
Starting: /usr/bin/qmake /Volumes/David/src/deskew/Projects/Scorecerer/src/Scorecerer.pro -r -spec /usr/local/Qt4.6/mkspecs/macx-g++
Exited with code 0.
Error while building project Scorecerer
When executing build step ‘QMake’
Not particularly informative. So I tried running the command explicitly in a terminal window and got the following:
DHJMacPro:/usr/bin $ /usr/bin/qmake /Volumes/David/src/deskew/Projects/Scorecerer/src/Scorecerer.pro -r -spec /usr/local/Qt4.6/mkspecs/macx-g++
QFSFileEngine::currentPath: getcwd() failed
QFSFileEngine::currentPath: getcwd() failed
QFSFileEngine::currentPath: getcwd() failed
QFSFileEngine::currentPath: getcwd() failed
QFSFileEngine::currentPath: getcwd() failed
QFSFileEngine::currentPath: getcwd() failed
QFSFileEngine::currentPath: getcwd() failed
QFSFileEngine::currentPath: getcwd() failed
Project LOAD(): Feature /Volumes/David/src/deskew/Projects/Shared/Common.pri cannot be found.
Note that it is possible to cat, more, or vi that Common.pri file….it is definitely there.
Everything was building fine with 4.5. If anyone has any idea how to deal with this issue, I’d appreciate it.
I’m running OSX (Leopard, 10.5.8)
Thanks,
David
Hi, I have download and install the ‘qt-win-commercial-4.6.0-vs2005.exe’, but any of the Apps in the package can not run,
seems miss depended Dlls, use the depend.exe to watch, it shows missed the msvcp80.dll and msvcr80.dll, but after copy my lastest version msvcp80.dll and msvcr80.dll to the bin folder, it still not work.
The above situation failed from RC version, but OK in Beta1 release, new version VC8 compiler is used?
@Roger: As you can see in the embedded manifest, for example in qtdemo.exe, this qt release appears to be linked against version 8.0.50727.4053 of the CRT.
…
…
To solve your issue just apply the below mentioned security patch to your Visual Studio 2005 Service Pack 1 installation. This will update the runtime libraries in “%WINDIR%/WinSxS” and also install the updated redist package.
http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?familyid=7c8729dc-06a2-4538-a90d-ff9464dc0197&displaylang=en
http://support.microsoft.com/?kbid=971090
@Qt: Great relase btw, i like the XSD validation and the state machine framework best!
Thanks,
Tobias
I was exited to test QT, being a hardcore.NET developer.
Downloaded QTCreator 1.3, install went smoothly on Windows 7 Ultimate x64.
Then tried to do simple hello world application. All I got was this error: “No valid Qt version set. Set one in Tools/Options “.
Checked the option, I said: ” QT in PATH .
Not quite the experience that I’m used to! Sorry.
Just thank you.
Qt is taking a great step by supporting OpenGL integrated into the core and by releasing its source as LGPL as well as GPL.
It might not beat Java anytime soon on the “management” market, but on 3D/CAD/Engineering market it is the best cross-platform framework so far.
Keep up the OpenGL support for both 3D and 2D accelerated GUI rendering!
@Jason: I face the same problem as Thomas; and I would definitively prefer QtDBus to be delivered by the installer. I am using Mac OS X 10.5.8!
Great jobs, guys!
Thank you
Same problem as Arnaud. Would be great to have QtDBus in the installer.
@mariner: if the option “Qt in PATH” is not disabled, although you have not installed any Qt in your PATH, then you’ve found a UI bug.
Or are you claiming that you *did* install Qt in your PATH and creator can’t find it? That would be a different bug.
Or have you simply installed the wrong package, you wanted the SDK but installed only the IDE? That would indicate that our download web page isn’t suited for hardcore .NET developers and might need some clarification.
In general I do agree with you, though. We do know that we have still plenty of work to do with the out-of-the-box experience when using Qt and Qt Creator. Error handling when the environment isn’t set up correctly does also need to be improved. So yes, it’s not entirely there for newbies (yet). But neither is C++.
@Tobias (and Roger): You’re right, the security patches are needed for VS2005 (and also for Vs2008). I applied these to our build machines between the Beta1 and RC1 releases, as requested by our support department.
Since downloading and installing QT4.6 for windows(LGPL) and trying to compile the examples with QT Creator 1.3 (like 4 days ago), have been plagued by this “d:/qt/2009.05/mingw/bin/../lib/gcc/mingw32/4.4.0/../../../libmingw32.a(main.o):main.c::-1: error: undefined reference to `WinMain@16′ “; please help Thanks.
Download and install QT Creator “Qt 4.6.0 (32bits) Nov 27 2009 в 14:53:38 c0e849ecc3″
Can’t build examples:
“c:/qt/mingw/bin/../lib/gcc/mingw32/4.4.0/../../../libmingw32.a(main.o):main.c::-1: error: undefined reference to `WinMain@16′”
Help, please.
Thanks.
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