Building user interfaces with QML

I don't know about you, but creating interfaces is not my most favorite part of development. I think that's because I'm not a designer or a UX expert. Recent advancements in developing intefaces make my life easier, for example Silverlight, Flex and my favorite QML.

In 10 mins I created a custom interface element, created a custom menu and was able to debug the app, all using QML. Granted I followed the tutorial here.

I was able to follow the tutorial using Vim and qmlviewer. I didn't have to compile anything and it just felt natural. I do web development every single day and the format is very similar to JSON, so I think that's why I felt that way.

The other awesome part of this is, I can build my interfaces using QML and everything else using C++. I find developing interfaces in C++ to be boring, cumbersome and really not that fun. With QML, I can rock the back end in C++ and the front end with QML. I'm looking forward to updating a couple projects I have using this approach. Another plus is, I can develop applications for Meego using QML :)

More to come later. Until then, check out the tutorial and if all else spend a couple mins following the tutorial.

Meego rocks!

Meego is a collaborative effort between several major technology players, to create one operating system for mobile devices. The effort brings together Maemo and Moblin and it was built using Nokia's Qt framework. I look forward to seeing devices in the US with Meego preinstalled. Even though it's only on version 1.1, they've accomplished a lot and there are plans to distribute it on mobile devices.

I used version 1.1 exclusively on my Asus Eeepc netbook for a couple months. It worked great, even used it for basic development.

For more information take a look at the Meego website.

How to recursively delete folders

I keep searching for this command in Linux, here is how to recursively delete folders:
rm -fr `find . -name foldername`

I like to use this command to clean a repository of subversion folders, for example:
rm -fr `find . -name .svn`

Trying to compile Qt 4.5.0

So after compiling Qt 4.5.0 a ton of times and continuing to run into the same issue where I have to grep the internet to find the dependencies, I figured I would post them this time.

To build Qt 4.5.0 on Debian Lenny, the easiest way for me so far is to run this first:
sudo apt-get install qt4-dev-tools libx11-dev libfreetype6-dev libavahi-gobject-dev libSM-dev libXrender-dev libfontconfig-dev libXext-dev

I hope this helps someone.

Credit:
http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?p=7438479#post7438479

Open Source in action

Sun was recently purchased by Oracle. With the acquisition, they got MySQL and it's large open source community. The amount of fragmentation and reforming in the community is really interesting. The article linked to below is a great example of open source in action, where the community will survive while the original project/product may fade away.

One of the best parts of the article:
"Open source customers are a notoriously fickle bunch. If one project doesn't deliver what users need, the users go elsewhere -- and the same goes for developers. Forks are a fact of life in the open source community, and arguably an entirely healthy one. Oracle just better hope it doesn't end up on the wrong side of the fork."

This captures the essence of the open source community and I hope Oracle has a flash of insight. I think it would be great if Oracle is able to recover, but from the looks of it, this started when MySQL was purchased by Sun. I'm just glad I prefer PostgreSQL and the PGSQL community seems to growing.

Article:
MySQL Forked beyond repair

So you take the current MySQL situation and compare it to the Nokia TrollTech acquisition. Nokia stepped in and Qt could have taken the same path, but Nokia LGPL's the framework, awesome.

Shifting to CMake

It seems every project developed in C++ is shifting to CMake as their build system. Because of this, there are tools and resources popping up everywhere supporting CMake. So... it looks like it's my turn to go through the pain and standardize with CMake.

A challenge I ran into when I was exploring CMake was compiling Qt. I will post later on how to do this. If you Google a bit, there are articles/posts out there that tackle this issue as well.

If you are interested in CMake as well you can check it out here:
http://www.cmake.org/

One of the cool tools available for CMake is CDash. Basically it's an open source continous integration system for CMake.

http://www.cdash.org/

Happy building!

Qt 4.5 Released!!

I was just thinking, I wonder if I should change my blog to QtJunkie :).

Qt 4.5 is released. Awesomeness all around, but the best part, for me at least, is the new LGPL license they added starting with this release.

http://www.qtsoftware.com/about/news/nokia-releases-new-qt-developer-offerings-to-increase-productivity-and-performance

Nokia/Qt Software made a great move by including this license option.

Along with the change above, they also released the first official version of QtCreator which can be downloaded separately or with the Qt SDK. Which is another awesome thing about this release, they created two separate installations, the framework and a full-blown Qt SDK with QtCreator and all.

Looking forward to the burst of Qt applications that will show up in the near future.