[QGIS-Developer] QGIS 3.46 builds to use Qt6?

[Nyall Dawson]

On Fri, 13 Dec 2024 at 22:52, Martin Dobias via QGIS-Developer
<qgis-developer at lists.osgeo.org> wrote:
>
> Hi all
>
> As the time progresses and Qt6 support in QGIS is getting better and better (huge thanks to all devs that have been pushing qt6 support forward!), what do you think about setting a timeline to finally switch the official QGIS builds to Qt6?
>
> My understanding is that there are only few blockers left to address (e.g. vectorized output from webengine, mac packages), so to kick off the discussion, I would like to propose that QGIS 3.46 scheduled for October 2025 could be the first release where qt6 builds would be the official ones. (qt5 builds could still be made, but not official anymore.)
>
> I think that should hopefully give use enough time to get things ready, and also give enough time for plugin developers to migrate plugins to be qt6 compatible.
>
> To speed up work on the items left, we could even make next year's grants specifically ONLY about qt6 migration, to make sure that we are on the right track...
>
> Does this sound doable, or am I just dreaming? :-)

I think that timeline is definitely reasonable, at least from the
point of view of "can we get QGIS Qt 6 builds stable and extremely
well tested". I'd love to see us aim for this milestone at that date.

That said, I share Vincent's concerns about the plugin situation. I'm
not super-comfortable with advertising Qt 6 builds as the "default"
for QGIS without some disclaimer about the plugin situation. Maybe at
this milestone we could rework the download page so that the two
options are presented equally, eg:

Which QGIS version do you want?

QGIS (Qt 5 version) -- less stable, but with full compatibility for
all existing plugins
QGIS (Qt 6 version) -- more stable, with better modern platform
support, but limited support for existing plugins. (see XXX for guides
on how to update your plugins to be compatible with these builds)

i.e. we just shove the choice of build at the user and let them make
an informed (?!) decision.

Nyall



>
> Cheers
> Martin
>
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