The Qt Company has published a release of the Qt 6.5 framework, in which work continues to stabilize and increase the functionality of the Qt 6 branch. Qt 6.5 provides support for Windows 10+, macOS 11+, Linux platforms (Ubuntu 20.04, openSUSE 15.4, SUSE 15 SP4, RHEL 8.4 /9.0), iOS 14+, Android 8+ (API 23+), webOS, WebAssembly, INTEGRITY and QNX. The source code for the Qt components is provided under the LGPLv3 and GPLv2 licenses.
Qt 6.5 received the status of an LTS release, within which updates for commercial license users will be generated within three years (for the rest, updates will be published six months before the formation of the next significant release). Support for the previous LTS branch of Qt 6.2 will last until September 30, 2024. The Qt 5.15 branch will be maintained until May 2025.
Major changes in Qt 6.5:
- The Qt Quick 3D Physics module, which provides an API for simulating physical processes that can be used with Qt Quick 3D for realistic interaction and movement of objects in 3D scenes, has been stabilized and made fully supported. The implementation is based on the PhysX engine.
- Added support for the dark mode of the design of the Windows platform. Automatic application of the system-activated dark theme and customization of borders and title, if the application uses a style that does not change the palette. In an application, you can customize your own reaction to changes in the system theme by handling changes to the QStyleHints::colorScheme property.
- In Qt Quick Controls, the Material style for Android has been brought into line with the recommendations of Material 3. A full-fledged style for iOS has been implemented. Added APIs for changing appearance (eg containerStyle for TextField or TextArea, or roundedScale for buttons and popups).
- On the macOS platform, applications that use QMessageBox or QErrorMessage are provided with platform-native dialogs.
- For Wayland, the QNativeInterface::QWaylandApplication API has been added to directly access native Wayland objects that are used in Qt internals, as well as to access information about the user's recent actions that can be required to be passed to Wayland protocol extensions. The new API is implemented in the QNativeInterface namespace, which also provides calls to access the native APIs of the X11 and Android platforms.
- Support for the Android 12 platform has been added, and despite significant changes in this branch, the ability to create universal assemblies for Android has been retained, which can work on devices with different versions of Android, starting with Android 8.
- The Boot2Qt stack has been updated, which can be used to create bootable mobile systems with an environment based on Qt and QML. The system environment in Boot2Qt has been updated to the Yocto 4.1 platform (Langdale).
- Packages for Debian 11 have begun and are commercially supported.
- The capabilities of the WebAssembly platform have been extended, allowing you to create Qt applications that run in a web browser and are portable between different hardware platforms. Applications built for the WebAssembly platform, thanks to JIT compilation, run with performance close to native code, can use Qt Quick, Qt Quick 3D, and the visualization tools available in Qt. The new version adds support for video rendering and the use of tools for people with disabilities in widgets.
- The Qt WebEngine web engine has been updated to the Chromium 110 codebase. On the Linux platform, support for hardware-accelerated video rendering using the Vulkan graphics API in X11 and Wayland-based environments has been implemented.
- The Qt Quick Effects module has been added, providing ready-made graphic effects for the interface based on Qt Quick. Custom effects can be created from scratch or obtained by combining existing effects using the Qt Quick Effect Maker toolkit.
- The Qt Quick 3D module provides the ability to adjust the level of detail of models (for example, simpler meshes can be generated for objects located far from the camera). The SceneEnvironment API implements support for fog and the gradual disappearance of distant objects. The ExtendedSceneEnvironment provides options for creating complex post-processing effects and combining effects such as depth of field, glow, and highlights.
- An experimental Qt GRPC module has been added with support for gRPC protocols and Protocol Buffer, which allows you to access gRPC services and serialize Qt classes using Protobuf.
- Support for configuring HTTP 1 connections has been added to the Qt Network module.
- Experimental CAN bus classes have been added to the Qt Serial Bus module, which can be used to encode and decode CAN messages, process frames, and parse DBC files.
- The Qt Location module has been revived, providing applications with tools for integrating maps, navigation, marking places of interest (POI). The module supports a plugin interface through which you can connect backends to work with various service providers and create API extensions. The module is still experimental and only supports the backend for maps based on Open Street Maps.
- Extended capabilities of Qt Core, Qt GUI, Qt Multimedia, Qt QML, Qt Quick Compiler, Qt Widgets modules.
- A lot of work has been done to improve stability, about 3500 bug reports have been closed.
Source: opennet.ru