Alpha Project Enables Qt Apps To Run on Android

Qt is the Symbian platform. The one that’s now headed towards death as Nokia moves to Windows Phone. And of course, Nokia and Microsoft have hopes that all of those Qt devs will becomes Windows Phone devs over the next year. Well, Necessitas from BogDan would allow you to package Qt apps and deploy them on Android. When apps are first launched, they’d make a call to a server to ensure that the appropriate Qt files are on the device and if they are, the app should load.  Here’s what the dev has to say:

I had a dream that one day, I’ll be able to deploy existing Qt software on any Android platform. I had a dream that one day, all Qt applications will use system wide shared Qt libraries. I had a dream that one day, all Qt applications once compiled and deployed to one android platform, will run on any other newer android platform and will last for years without any recompilation. I had a dream that one day, I’ll be able to create, manage, compile debug and deploy Qt apps using a first class citizen IDE.

Now this is an Alpha project that is known to have bugs (thus the alpha status) but if this is realized then this could be a big blow, at least psychological, to Nokia who may have to take more steps to keep their base of developers happy (except for the $1000 of hardware and other training they’ve agreed to provide them). In theory, this project shouldn’t be a huge jump as Qt works cross platform and that includes Linux. Although the developer of this project suggests that he’s hopeful of help from Nokia on this project which will never happen. Anyway, this is worth keeping an eye on because if a final/stable version of this is brought to light then a lot of Qt devs may become Android devs overnight.

If you want to see a video of it in action here’s a link (but it has a breast involved and was pulled from YouTube already so I won’t post it here directly).

via Slashdot