'[kde-promo] Necessitas alpha 3 release'

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List:       kde-promo
Subject:    [kde-promo] Necessitas alpha 3 release
From:       BogDan <bog_dan_ro () yahoo ! com>
Date:       2011-10-29 18:52:26
Message-ID: 1319914346.21731.YahooMailNeo () web121407 ! mail ! ne1 ! yahoo ! com
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Hello everybody,

  I know we are a little late to the party, but we'd like to say: Happy birthday KDE \
!!! Of course we couldn't come with empty hand, so we come with a gift: the \
Necessitas alpha3 release !

 Necessitas alpha3 release should be the last but one release, before we'll ship \
first beta version. Why the beta release is so important and why is delayed that \
much? The beta release will *GUARANTEE* the API/ABI compatibility, meaning that an \
application which uses that version will run without *any* change, on any further \
releases! It also means you can target a billion devices using Qt, much sooner than \
you expected :) Of course if the situation will require we reserve the right to \
release additionally alpha releases, because going to beta is a great responsibility \
we can't afford to screw it up. *IF* everything goes right, we want to release the \
first beta SDK until the end of this year !

 Also don't forget that this release is focused mostly on features completeness, the \
next releases will be focused mostly on stability, so if your issue(s) is/are not yet \
fixed, please have a little more patience (and understanding :) ).

Most of all, we need your help to make it happen, so please:
 - help us to write documentations, FAQ, and to update and maintain project web \
                pages.
 - help us to answer peoples questions on android-qt mailing list, doing this you are \
                helping us more than you can imagine.
 - report any issues you find using \
http://code.google.com/p/android-lighthouse/issues/list, or \
                https://sourceforge.net/p/necessitas/tickets/
 - help us to check and fix the opened issues.
 - help us to implement the remaining features \
http://community.kde.org/Necessitas/TODO , \
http://community.kde.org/Necessitas/Schedules/alpha4

Alpha 3 release brings you lots of exciting features, I'd like to talk a little bit \
                about two of them:
 * OpenGL this is probably the most expected and exciting feature of this release. \
Yes, is here ! We tried (and succeed) to give you a seamless OpenGL support, even if \
we have different platform plugins to handle raster and OpenGL drawings, you don't \
need to worry about it, if your application will require OpenGL, we'll choose \
                automatically the right plugin for your application.
 * Java redesign and Ministro II, this is a huge step forward for this project, this \
work will give us freedom to change the platform plugin as we wish without breaking \
any existing application. How it works ? Your applications doesn't know anything \
about qt libs, platform plugins and stuff like that, it only knows that it needs to \
connect to Ministro service, pass some parameters to it and to wait for its response, \
when the response comes it will have a list with .jar files which your applications \
needs to load them at runtime and to instantiate the startup class, this class will \
load Qt libs and your application. Basically the old java part was moved to these \
.jar files which will be provided by Ministro, Ministro will take care that the .jar \
files and qt platform libs will always be compatible.

BE AWARE !!! Because your application needs other java sources, please make sure you \
are removing the old ones (please remove android folder from any existing project)!!!

I'd like to highlight the most important features:

Qt framework:
 * OpenGL Support
 * Java part redesign
 * QAtomic implementation
 * Seamless Android assets support
 * Sync with upstream Qt 4.8.0-rc1

QtCreator:
 * Prepare the package for android market publishing
 * Sync with QtCreator 2.3.1

QtWebkit:
 * Sync with QtWebkit 2.2.0
 * It seems that the massive memory leak form 2.1.x was fixed.

QtMobility:
 * Sync with Qt framework changes.

Necessitas SDK:
 * Linaro toolchain based on gcc 4.6.x (it is experimental)
 * Android-4+ (armv5 & raster only) SDK
 * Android-5+ (armv5&armv7, raster&OpenGl) SDKs

Minitro:
 * Can provide specific CPU extensions libraries, this feature allows us to provide \
not only platform specific libs (armv5, armv6, armv7, x86, etc.) but also libs for \
specific CPU extensions, e.g. if your CPU supports VFP but the platform not (is the \
case of armv5) Ministro can download libs for armv5 *WITH* VFP flags turn on, also if \
automatic vectorization [1] will improve the speed will ship Qt libs compiled \
*completely* with NEON, where devices CPU supports NEON instructions, currently Qt \
detects at runtime if your CPU supports NEON and it uses that extension only in a few \
                drawing functions.
 * Sync with Qt framework changes

For a complete change log please run the following command on every repository:
$ git log n0.21..n0.3

The following people have contributed to this project:
 == Code ==
 * Thomas Senyk: OpenGL support, fixes
 * Ray Donnelly: Linaro toolchain integration, NDK, gdb, Windows, and Mac fixes and \
                SDKs.
 * Nuno Pinheiro: beautiful artwork for necessitas project (except the SDK \
                watermark).
 * Robert Schuster, Christian Küster java redesign proof of concept, Ministro code \
                cleanup and fixes.
 * Espen Riskedal: fixes (initial fonts fixes)
 * Marius Bugge Monsen: cleanup the repo.
 * Åke Svedin: initial DPI fix patch.
 * all Nokia developers which worked to all qt projects !
 * BogDan Vatra: Java redesign, QAtomic implementation, Android assets, \
QDesktopServices, QtCreator Android market publishing, QtCreator android plugin \
rework, Ministro, SDK for Linux, fixes.

 == Localizations ==
 * Lauri Laanmets: Estonian
 * Joost Bloemen, Maarten Ditzel: Duch
 * Alexander Wolf: Russian
 * Nikos Gerontidis: Greek
 * Samuel Gaist: French
 * Andrius da Costa Ribas, Anselmo L.S. Melo: Brazilian
 * Leonard Lee: Malay, Chinese (Simplified and Traditional)
 * Thomas Senyk, Josua Dietze
 * Ivan <ipansmail@googlemail.com>: Indonesian
 * Dejan Gojkovic: Serbian
 * Maciej Kujalowicz: Polish
 * Tomas <tomaslov@gmail.com >: Norwegian
 * Taro <taro.develop@gmail.com >: Japanese
 * Seyyed Razi Alavizadeh: Persian
 * Roberto Luttino: Italian
 * BogDan Vatra: Romanian

The SDKs installers can be downloaded from: \
https://sourceforge.net/projects/necessitas/files/ The new Ministro packages from: \
https://sourceforge.net/projects/ministro.necessitas.p/files/

Known issues:

Linux:
 - None till this date.

Mac:
 - Sadly we found a show stopper just before release and we delayed the release a few \
days until we'll figure out what is wrong. We'll come with a separate announcement \
when this platform will be ready.

Windows:
 - You must select manually the application (projects->run->package \
configurations->Run: <select the application >) Open [2] and search for "Application \
                Tab". A fix will be available next week.
 - You can't create AVDs from within QtCreator.

 I want to personally thank to all who answered other people questions, to all how \
reported errors and made suggestions !

[1] http://infocenter.arm.com/help/index.jsp?topic=/com.arm.doc.dht0002a/ch01s04s03.html
 [2] http://sourceforge.net/p/necessitas/wiki/How to write Qt apps for Android

Cheers,
BogDan.

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