The Qt Company has released the alpha version of Qt 6.2 witch includes all widely used Qt add-on modules previously available in the Qt 5.15 release. Qt 6.2 is also the first release in the Qt 6 series to provide Long Term Support for commercial licensees.
The Qt 6.2 release provides multiple new features, for example 3D particles allowing you to create exciting 3D user experiences with Qt Quick 3D. Qt 6.2 also extends the Qt 6 promise of limitless scalability with supporting Vulkan, Metal, and Direct3D12 as new deployment environments for hardware accelerated graphics. Among the 13 add-on modules previously not available with Qt 6, included in Qt 6.2 are a significantly updated Qt Multimedia, as well as widely used Qt Bluetooth and Qt WebEngine modules improving your ability to innovate in next generation user experiences.
The chosen approach of the Qt Company was to release a stable Qt 6.0 with missing many modules. This caused the users depending upon some of the missing add-ons not to be able to migrate to Qt 6. With Qt 6.2 this can be done since it reached enough feature parity for most of the users to migrate to Qt 6.
It is worth noting that this new version will take full advantage of the new capabiliies of Qt Creator 5.0, Qt Design Studio 2.2, and the quality assurance tools Squish and Coco.
Here is a list of new modules in Qt 6.2:
- Qt Bluetooth
- Qt Multimedia
- Qt NFC
- Qt Positioning
- Qt Quick Dialogs
- Qt Remote Objects
- Qt Sensors
- Qt Serialbus
- Qt Serialport
- Qt Webchannel
- Qt Webengine
- Qt Websockets
- Qt Webview
In addition to the separate modules above Qt Android Extras and as well as other platforms extras functionality is brought into Qt Base and no longer available as separate modules. More details about new modules and features can be read from Qt 6.2 New features page (the page is still under construction and will be updated during the Alpha and Beta phases). the author warns about the fact that Qt 6 is a new major version of Qt and full-compatibility is not insured. Check the porting guide for details on the changed / removed API to see guidance on how to move your project to Qt 6.
Binaries for Qt 6.2 alpha are available and can be installed via the maintenance tool or by using the Qt Online Installer. Qt 6.2 Alpha source packages can be downloaded from the Qt Account portal and the download.qt.io as well.
Interesting links
- Link to the original post: https://www.qt.io/blog/qt-6.2-alpha-released