Is there ever going to be a Qt 5.5.2 release?

[agarny]

Hi,

I am working on a project that is stuck with Qt 5.5.1 (due to Qt WebEngine not being good enough to replace Qt WebKit yet, for what we need to do at least).

Yet, we just came across an issue (see QTBUG-46882) and although it got fixed before Qt 5.5.1 was released, it never made it into Qt 5.5.1!?

Now, some Qt guys have, on several occasions, told people like us (who can't switch to Qt WebEngine) that they would still be fine by sticking to the Qt 5.5 branch. I am 'happy' with that, but then what about releasing at least a Qt 5.5.2 version that fixes currently known issues?

Cheers, Alan.

[SGaist]

Hi,

You're on the wrong place for that question. You should rather bring this to the interest mailing list. You'll find there Qt's developers/maintainers. This forum is more user oriented.

However, I think it's highly unlikely that there will be a 5.5.2. You'd probably better build the module against a more recent version of Qt.

[Chris Kawa]

I don't think anyone is working on 5.5.x line anymore, especially that 5.7 is already out and 5.6.x is the long term support line.
Although QtWebkit was removed in Qt 5.6 you can still download 5.6.1 compatible sources or even 5.7 compatible sources and build the module yourself. I'd say making it work with 5.6.x or 5.7.x would be a better bet than waiting for 5.5.2 that is probably not going to happen.

[agarny]

Thanks @sgaist and @chris-kawa, I thought it might be the case, but still thought I would ask anyway. Well, needless to say that I am less than impressed with the way things are going with Qt lately. :(

Otherwise, I didn't know about that interest mailing list, but still I couldn't see myself subscribing to it just so that I could ask one question.

Finally, the sole fact that the Qt guys are providing Qt WebKit source code for Qt 5.6.1 and Qt 5.7 really goes to show that they are (indirectly, at least) acknowledging the fact that Qt WebEngine is not ready to (fully) replace Qt WebKit. Now, I just wish they would go the extra mile and provide binaries, because building Qt WebKit is a 'nightmare' in itself (when you need to support Windows, Linux and OS X).

[SGaist]

On a side note, there's a community effort for providing a QtWebKit V2/NG module that you can find here.

Announcement of the TP2 here.

[agarny]

Thanks for the side note @SGaist, even though I can't see us using it at this stage ('only' TP2 for now, no Linux binaries, and it uses MSVC 2015 on Windows while we are currently using MSVC 2013).

[JKSH]

@agarny said:

we just came across an issue (see QTBUG-46882)

That's an issue in the Qt Widgets module. Here are two workarounds you could try, while continuing to use Qt 5.5.1 as your base version:

1. Swap in a newer version of Qt5Widgets.dll during deployment (I'm not sure if this will work, but Qt does promise binary compatibility)

2. Patch and build the Qt Widgets module yourself (this is much easier than building Qt WebKit)

[agarny]

Thanks @JKSH, but this is one issue that we have identified, but there might be others that have yet to be identified and the fact that the Qt 5.5 branch is not maintained anymore means that they will never be fixed.

So, in the end, we decided to upgrade to Qt 5.6.1 LTS and therefore build Qt WebKit ourselves. I have already given it a try and I was able to build Qt WebKit just fine on both Linux and OS X. Now, I just hope the same will be true on Windows...

[jsulm]

@agarny Maybe you already know this: https://github.com/annulen/webkit/releases/tag/qtwebkit-tp2

[agarny]

@jsulm Yes, @SGaist mentioned it just above and we might very well use it at some point (i.e. when it's 'ready').

[Konstantin Tokarev]

@agarny What do you consider "ready"? If you need only widgets API and you don't require any feature marked as not ready in feature table [1], you can start using it right now. While it's true that there may be some bugs in Qt-specific code at this point, there are far less bugs and crashes in WebKit engine.

[1] https://github.com/annulen/webkit/wiki/Comparison-with-QtWebKit-5.6

[agarny]

@Konstantin-Tokarev, I really appreciate your work on QtWebKit Reloaded, it's just that the 'official' Qt WebKit has been working fine for me for the past few years, so I am not willing to take any chances at this time, not least because I soon need to release a new version of my software.

So, keeping all of that in mind, I am 'happy' just to build the 'official' version of Qt WebKit for now. This being said, I am definitely going to keep an eye on your work since I agree that it's the way forward in the long term.