Qt for Windows Runtime Technology Preview Released

Today, we released the first iteration of our development efforts of porting Qt to Windows Runtime.

As a reminder, this includes multiple targets. First of all, you will be able to create Windows Store Apps for Windows 8 and subsequent versions. Also Windows RT, the operating system by Microsoft for tablets is supported. Lastly, Windows Phone 8 will also be supported, as it shares a significant amount of APIs with WinRT.

So far we have been aiming to get the basics right:

  • Configure Qt to find compilers for the different mkspecs we created
  • Automatically setup the cross compile environment without any manual tweaking. Some of you might remember “setcepaths” from the Windows CE port. Things like this are not required, configure and qmake will do all that magic for you
  • Compilation and support for most parts of qtbase

The last item also implies that Qt Quick 2 is not supported with this initial preview. But in case you want to test your widget-based application, you should be able to do so. It is important to note that the WinRT Technology Preview is based on the dev branch of Qt's next minor release and not on today's version, Qt 5.2.

To get started all you need to do is download the source package and call:

configure -xplatform winrt-x86-msvc2013

Followed by “nmake/jom” for an x86 build for WinRT with Visual Studio 2013. Other combinations are x64, msvc2012 and winphone for Windows Phone.

After compilation, you can then use this to build your project. Creating an app bundle and installation of this is documented here. As a pre-warning, manual steps are required which we will fix for the final version.

So what is coming next?

First, we want to improve the quality of existing modules and also ease the development workflow up to a level which you are used to for other platforms. Afterwards, the modules for supporting Qt Quick 2 will be added, broadening from there over the other Qt Essential and Qt AddOns modules. The aim is to provide frequent updates to you so you can evaluate the quality of the port.

But for now, we need your help and feedback. Please download the package from the Digia Qt Customer Portal or from download.qt-project.org for the open-source version and report any issues you will find. And of course, if you feel like you want to contribute to this project, you are more than welcomed.

 


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