Book Image

Cross-Platform Development with Qt 6 and Modern C++

By : Nibedit Dey
Book Image

Cross-Platform Development with Qt 6 and Modern C++

By: Nibedit Dey

Overview of this book

Qt is a cross-platform application development framework widely used for developing applications that can run on a wide range of hardware platforms with little to no change in the underlying codebase. If you have basic knowledge of C++ and want to build desktop or mobile applications with a modern graphical user interface (GUI), Qt is the right choice for you. Cross-Platform Development with Qt 6 and Modern C++ helps you understand why Qt is one of the favorite GUI frameworks adopted by industries worldwide, covering the essentials of programming GUI apps across a multitude of platforms using the standard C++17 and Qt 6 features. Starting with the fundamentals of the Qt framework, including the features offered by Qt Creator, this practical guide will show you how to create classic user interfaces using Qt Widgets and touch-friendly user interfaces using Qt Quick. As you advance, you'll explore the Qt Creator IDE for developing applications for multiple desktops as well as for embedded and mobile platforms. You will also learn advanced concepts about signals and slots. Finally, the book takes you through debugging and testing your app with Qt Creator IDE. By the end of this book, you'll be able to build cross-platform applications with a modern GUI along with the speed and power of native apps.
Table of Contents (17 chapters)
1
Section 1: The Basics
6
Section 2: Cross-Platform Development
8
Section 3: Advanced Programming, Debugging, and Deployment

Porting from Qt 5 into Qt 6

Qt 6 is a major change to the Qt framework, therefore it breaks some of the backward compatibility. So, before upgrading to Qt 6, make sure that your Qt 5 application is updated to Qt 5.15. Porting will be easier from Qt 5.15 to Qt 6, with the fewest number of changes. However, APIs marked as deprecated or obsolete in Qt 5.15 may have been removed from Qt 6.0.

The CMake APIs in Qt 5 and Qt 6 are almost identical in terms of semantics. As a result, Qt 5.15 introduced versionless targets and commands, allowing CMake code to be written that is completely independent of Qt versions. Versionless imported targets are most useful for projects that require both Qt 5 and Qt 6 compilation. It is not recommended to use them by default because of the missing target properties. You can read more on this at the following link: https://doc.qt.io/qt-6/cmake-qt5-and-qt6-compatibility.html.

Some of the classes and modules have been removed in Qt 6, but these are kept...