14 DAY TRIAL // The Qt Company, through Tuukka Turunen, was pleased to announce that the upcoming Qt 5.8 major update of the popular, open-source and cross-platform GUI toolkit for building Qt apps for mobile and desktop platforms entered Beta stages of development.
And a first Beta build is now available for download and testing for early adopters, bringing a bunch of exciting new features, among which we can mention a brand-new configuration system, an all-new graphics architecture containing Qt Quick 2D Renderer for devices without OpenGL support. For improved startup, Qt 5.8 Beta ships with built-in QML (Qt Meta Language or Qt Modeling Language) cache.
"Qt 5.8 comes with a rewritten configuration system, which allows for easy customization of your Qt build. The main focus of this feature is for the Device Creation, but it can also be used to tailor a Qt build for mobile or desktop. The system allows removing individual pieces of functionality and APIs from Qt, thus creating a more lightweight set of libraries for deployment," read the release notes.
Pledging to be a very interesting release, Qt 5.8 promises to introduce a large number of new features, including Qt Wayland Compositor, Qt SCXML and Qt Serial Bus modules, as well as initial support for Apple's tvOS and watchOS operating systems. To get yourself familiar with what's coming to Qt 5.8 later this year, please consider studying the full changelog. To test, you can download Qt 5.8 Beta right now from our website. Don't forget to report bugs at https://bugreports.qt.io/.