Discuss: don't support Qt6 for Leo 6.4 final?

[Edward K. Ream]

Leo does not need to support Qt6 for Leo 6.4b1. Indeed, b1 is focused solely on supporting the leoInteg project.

Yes, Leo must eventually support Qt6. The question is, does Leo need to support Qt6 for Leo 6.4 final? I am inclined to say no because that will give us more time for testing. Otoh, perhaps we should just blast away.

Your comments, please.

Edward

[tbp1...@gmail.com]

Last time I tried it with devel, Leo wouldn't even run with the latest version of pyqt6 (6.11).  And even if it will by now, some plugins probably won't work correctly or at all.  So I'm inclined to say not to worry about it at this preliminary release (pre-6.4 final), and not to make it a major goal.  If it turns out to happen, fine.  With VR3, rendering will be crippled until we get the new equivalent of webEngineView, possibly in the fall.  Freewin will be in better shape but still won't do the rendered view well but you don't need it to use the plugin).

The only gotcha I can think of is if a user were to install some other non-Leo package that in turn wanted pyqt6.  Perhaps Leo could have a command-line switch not to use pyqt6 if pyqt5 were available.  That would require both to be available and both to be imported, and some finagling with the name assignments after the imports.  But it should be workable.

I 've been managing the use of pyqt6 in this way:   after installation, I moved all the pyqt6 files out of site-packages to some other directory.  When I want to try pyqt6, I set the PYTHONPATH environmental variable to point to the new location.  This lets me try different pyqt6 versions,  and to keep using pyqt5 by default, in a fairly convenient way (I don't seem to coexist well with venvs).

[Edward K. Ream]

On Tue, Jul 6, 2021 at 5:31 PM tbp1...@gmail.com <tbp1...@gmail.com> wrote:

Last time I tried it with devel, Leo wouldn't even run with the latest version of pyqt6 (6.11).  And even if it will by now, some plugins probably won't work correctly or at all.  So I'm inclined to say not to worry about it at this preliminary release (pre-6.4 final), and not to make it a major goal.  If it turns out to happen, fine.  With VR3, rendering will be crippled until we get the new equivalent of webEngineView, possibly in the fall.  Freewin will be in better shape but still won't do the rendered view well but you don't need it to use the plugin).

Thanks for these comments. They helped me think about my options.

After some thought, I would like to fix the pyQt options for b1. That will allow us all to test the new code.

I don't want to mess with a new command-line option. I would just have to remove it later.

Edward

[tbp1...@gmail.com]

I won't argue.  I will just  emphasize that there is some difference between pyqt6.03 and 6.11 in terms of compatibility, and who knows which one users will have installed.

[Edward K. Ream]

On Wed, Jul 7, 2021 at 10:55 AM tbp1...@gmail.com <tbp1...@gmail.com> wrote:

I won't argue.  I will just  emphasize that there is some difference between pyqt6.03 and 6.11 in terms of compatibility, and who knows which one users will have installed.

Yes. Leo must work with either one. #1973 must be fixed before we can say that Leo supports qt6.

I have just moved #1973 up to b1, on the theory that we may as well test the qt6 code asap.

Edward

[Rob]

Perhaps related, but I can't run Leo now (can't import QT message). Anyone else getting this message?

Rob...

[Edward K. Ream]

On Wed, Jul 7, 2021 at 7:12 PM Rob <lar...@gmail.com> wrote:

Perhaps related, but I can't run Leo now (can't import QT message). Anyone else getting this message?

I just checked that leoQt.py does not disable Qt6. Afaik, there have been no Qt-related changes in devel or other branches lately.

Edward

[David Szent-Györgyi]

Qt 6.2, which is planned to be the first QT6 release that supports "all widely-used Qt add-on modules", is scheduled for release at the end of September. Its first beta was released on 6th July. See the entry on the Qt Developers' blog. 

Note for anyone building Qt5 from source: partway through the lifetime of Qt 5.15 as a Long-Term Support release, The Qt Company has limited the access by non-paying customers to long-term support releases. As such, the KDE developers are collecting a series of patches to the last public release of KDE 5.15. These patches are meant to address security issues, crashes, and functional defects. 

[Edward K. Ream]

On Thu, Jul 8, 2021 at 11:18 AM David Szent-Györgyi <das...@gmail.com> wrote:

Qt 6.2, which is planned to be the first QT6 release that supports "all widely-used Qt add-on modules", is scheduled for release at the end of September. Its first beta was released on 6th July. See the entry on the Qt Developers' blog. 

Note for anyone building Qt5 from source: partway through the lifetime of Qt 5.15 as a Long-Term Support release, The Qt Company has limited the access by non-paying customers to long-term support releases. As such, the KDE developers are collecting a series of patches to the last public release of KDE 5.15. These patches are meant to address security issues, crashes, and functional defects. 

Thanks for these notes. As I read them, there are no immediate impacts on Leo.

Edward