If you want to test the “live” code of this new version in development on Gentoo, we now have ebuilds available in our qting-edge overlay. (Just keep in mind Qt 4.7 is currently incompatible with KDE4, if you happen to use that.) And we also have updated ebuilds for the upcoming Qt Creator 2.0 version.

I’m curious what new Qt application development this will spur.

We also have removed the need for the libX11 dependency in qt-core and a couple of other non-gui modules. So you can now for example have a server-only install of quassel with minimal dependencies. The libX11 dependency is now only pulled by packages that really need it.

Another thing that changed is that we dropped the custom-cxxflags useflag. After a long period of testing we haven’t come across any problems with “advanced” cxxflags in Qt 4.5, so now we always let the Qt modules be built with the user-specified flags. As this is an eclass level change, this means also users of the stable branch will see this change. An emerge --newuse world will trigger a recompile of Qt, but this means you will get better optimizations.

At the last project meeting we decided to introduce a kde useflag to force selecting media-sound/phonon instead of qt-phonon for KDE users. Now that both Qt 4.5.1 and phonon-4.3.1 are stable, or soon to be stabilized (depending on how quick or slow the arch testers are for the architecture that you’re using), enabling the kde useflag (if you want to use KDE4) should give you a smooth upgrade path, without any qt-phonon related blocks. If you don’t have nor want kdelibs on your system, you should disable the kde useflag, and you will get qt-phonon, which is preferred by Qt.

And if you want to prevent media-sound/phonon from pulling in gstreamer, then disable its gstreamer useflag, and make sure to also disable the phonon useflag for x11-libs/qt-qt3support. This will then disable the phonon options in qtconfig, but you can still configure phonon in KDE’s systemsettings.

If you still have any issues, please comment on the bug.

I also made an appeal for new staff members wanting to help out maintaining Qt and related packages in Gentoo. That got a lot more response than I expected, and as a result I started mentoring a few guys to become new Gentoo developers. Coincidentally there are several Greeks among them — it seems they can’t leave me alone! (FYI: I have lived in Greece for 6 years, did my university degree there, and had a long serious relationship with a Greek girl.) It is nice tho, to reminiscence about the good times I had in Greece, their whacky language and delicious food!

I want to make a special mentioning of Markos Chandras, who has become a very valuable member of the Qt team, and is now on the verge of becoming a full developer. He is a great help in squashing bugs and thinking about how to improve things. We have started a new overlay, called qting-edge (a name that collaborator Christian Franke came up with), in which we develop new Qt ebuilds and eclasses. We also have ebuilds for the “live” git development version of Qt, and KDE’s patched qt-copy. And we add new applications using Qt4 to the overlay for testing.

It is still my ideal to assemble a light-weight Qt4 desktop, and this overlay is another step into that direction. The overlay contains x11-wm/antico, and while that is a promising project, it certainly isn’t ready for daily use yet. I’m hoping qlwm works better (it certainly is more mature), so that will be my next target. If you know a Qt4 project that you think is interesting for the overlay, or even portage, give me a shout!

• I cleaned out some cruft, packages that in my opinion weren’t useful anymore
• I removed the older versions of hitchhiker-sources, because the kernel devs recommend using only the latest, for security reasons
• I added a live git ebuild for Arora, the new Qt4 WebKit browser

Arora needs >=qt-4.4.0, which you can get here as a tarball for use in your local overlay (if it breaks anything, you get to keep the pieces), or from one of the other overlays that provide up-to-date or development snapshots of Qt4. I’ve been told qt-4.4.0 release should be added (as hardmasked) to portage later this week.

I’m actually looking into adding more Qt4 based applications, either to the overlay or portage. My goal would be to get together an as complete as possible desktop using just (or mainly at least) Qt4 programs. The most obvious missing part is a Window Manager. Cutebox was a promising project, but has been abandoned even before its first release. Anyone that would resurrect it and bring it to a useful form, would win a guaranteed spot in my personal Hall of Heroes.