Sailfish(Jolla): Ideas/Qns & Concerns/Criticisms - Page 60 - maemo.org

shmerl | # 591 | 2013-07-14, 05:33 | Report

Jolla is going to use Wayland from the start. Exciting news: https://twitter.com/JollaHQ/status/356034168351756290

Last edited by shmerl; 2013-07-14 at 05:52.

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Dave999 | # 592 | 2013-07-14, 07:21 | Report

Yes, but not xwayland yet. Not that it's matter too much

don_falcone | # 593 | 2013-07-14, 07:57 | Report

...i wonder what impact for application compatibility it has, and therefore on leveraging abilities for filling application catalogs from existing codebases.

shmerl | # 594 | 2013-07-14, 08:25 | Report

I doubt many applications are using X directly. Most are using frameworks and libraries (Qt, EGL and etc.). So they can be rebuilt for Wayland easily.

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MartinK | # 595 | 2013-07-14, 09:44 | Report

Originally Posted by shmerl View Post

I doubt many applications are using X directly. Most are using frameworks and libraries (Qt, EGL and etc.). So they can be rebuilt for Wayland easily.

Sure, but that's the issue. As Qt4 does not really work with Wayland, having no XWayland means no Qt4 on Sailfish.

Therefore all the Qt4 applications already running on Nemo mobile, Fremantle and Harmattan will need to be converted to Qt5 to run on Sailfish.

Another issue is Python bindings. The PySide bindings that are already available for Nemo currently do not support Qt5 at all (Sfiet Konstantin said he will look into it, so let's hope for the better

).

The alternative PyQt Python bindings do support Qt5, but currently don't support QtQuick at all, but it hopefully will in the future. Another potential issue with PyQt is, that it is GPL only, meaning your application has to be GPL when using it. PySide is LGPL, meaning applications using it don't have to be GPL. Also unlike PySide, there are not yet any PyQt packages in Mer/Nemo.

All in all, another issue might be with backporting Sailfish stuff to Harmattan and Fremantle - unless we can get Qt5 running on them, then backports might not be possible at all. And it is unlikely many developers will want to maintain a Qt4 only version once converting they application to Qt5.

So that's my "analysis" of possible issues with Sailfish using Wayland only.

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mikecomputing | # 596 | 2013-07-14, 12:37 | Report

Originally Posted by MartinK View Post

Sure, but that's the issue. As Qt4 does not really work with Wayland, having no XWayland means no Qt4 on Sailfish.

Therefore all the Qt4 applications already running on Nemo mobile, Fremantle and Harmattan will need to be converted to Qt5 to run on Sailfish.

Another issue is Python bindings. The PySide bindings that are already available for Nemo currently do not support Qt5 at all (Sfiet Konstantin said he will look into it, so let's hope for the better

).

The alternative PyQt Python bindings do support Qt5, but currently don't support QtQuick at all, but it hopefully will in the future. Another potential issue with PyQt is, that it is GPL only, meaning your application has to be GPL when using it. PySide is LGPL, meaning applications using it don't have to be GPL. Also unlike PySide, there are not yet any PyQt packages in Mer/Nemo.

All in all, another issue might be with backporting Sailfish stuff to Harmattan and Fremantle - unless we can get Qt5 running on them, then backports might not be possible at all. And it is unlikely many developers will want to maintain a Qt4 only version once converting they application to Qt5.

So that's my "analysis" of possible issues with Sailfish using Wayland only.

I don't see any issues to not support X11 it's time to move forward not backward. We have waiting to long to get rid of crappy X11 on desktop too. And as we know KDE it will take a year or so before we get rid of it on KDE desktop. So in case of embedded platforms like Sailfish and the PlasmaTablet UI its good decision too get rid of X11 now.

And about PyQT I don't get why we need two bindings anyway except maybe the GPL only fanatics. PySide is the way to go for all users. Abandon PyQT IMHO...

Btw. isn't the plan to move nemomobile to Qt5+Wayland also?

Last edited by mikecomputing; 2013-07-14 at 12:50.

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jalyst | # 597 | 2013-07-14, 16:29 | Report

Originally Posted by shmerl View Post

Jolla is going to use Wayland from the start. Exciting news: https://twitter.com/JollaHQ/status/356034168351756290

Thread @Phoronix is quite lively too...
http://phoronix.com/forums/showthrea...red-By-Wayland

Last edited by jalyst; 2013-07-14 at 16:47.

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shmerl | # 598 | 2013-07-14, 16:33 | Report

My guess is, that Jolla have limited resources, and they decided to let Qt 4 go since their switch to Wayland. It's up to the libraries like PySide to catch up. I think from Jolla's perspective it's a good move. They can't support legacy cases in order to move forward swifter.

As for backporting to Harmattan (and let alone to Maemo) - I see no reason for Jolla to worry about that. They have no need to support stalled historic systems. They focus on Mer as a base, and Mer is using Qt 5 with Wayland going forward (it still offers the case of Qt 4 with Xorg for those who want it, but it's Jolla's choice not to use those I guess).

Last edited by shmerl; 2013-07-14 at 16:35.

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jalyst | # 599 | 2013-07-14, 16:54 | Report

Jolla's focus is to ensure it's as easy as possible to port apps from Freemantle/Harmattan/Elsewhere to Sailfish* via Qt5/HTML5/AlienDalvik, no more & no less.

It's up to Freemantle/Harmattan devs to decide whether or not to support their N9xx users by back-porting...
OR by getting Qt5 working nicely in Freemantle/Harmattan (if doable?) & maintaining their apps (tweaked for each UX) via it for Freemantle/Harmattan/Sailfish.

*even port many non-core/3rd-party apps themselves (they also need to focus on sourcing content, not just apps)

Last edited by jalyst; 2013-07-14 at 17:09.

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mariusmssj | # 600 | 2013-07-14, 18:34 | Report

from what I seen Wayland does have plenty of legacy support, It will be able to talk to X servers and ect.