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Using Qt 4 vs Qt 5 to develop applications for Windows and OS X?

I am considering using Qt to connect a stand-alone Windows application to OS X and possibly Linux. I have never used Qt before. I do not know if I should work with Qt 4 or Qt 5.

I would be interested to get developer feedback on relatively large applications using Qt 4 and 5. What are the pros / cons for each version?

More about the project:

The application is a high-performance tool for digital photography: HDR, Tone Mapping, etc., large photos with a 96-bit pixel.

Currently, the application uses the following technologies:

  • User Interface Code: C #, C ++ / CLI, .NET 2.0 WinForm
  • Main algorithms: C ++, OpenMP, SSE

I plan to use the Qt framework to update the user interface code. I have the following limitations:

  • Supported OS: Windows XP, Vista, 7 and 8; OS X (Linux)
  • Two builds: 32 and 64-bit
  • The application should be able to run on virtual machines (with little or no OpenGL support)
  • Frequency / real-time aspects are important.
  • Primary Development Environment: Visual Studio for Windows 7 64-bit

Thanks!

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3 answers

Based only on your platform limitations, you probably want to use Qt 5. Windows 7 64-bit is a level 1 platform in Qt 5. Windows 8 is not even a level 2 platform in Qt 4. Qt 5 has better display support with high DPI resolution (important for Mac users with Retina displays).

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If you are trying to avoid OpenGL, then Qt 5 will not be a good fit, since they will switch to using it as dependencies for QML widgets and scene graphs. This does not mean that you cannot use it at all, but it is certainly something to consider if you have an aversion to OpenGL.

Qt 4.8 is completely mature, the code base is pretty well covered at this point, so it might be better suited because drawing libraries are not related to OpenGL.

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While changing the version number from 4 to 5 means the main release and additional features that you may need or not, there are likely to be 5 bug fixes that may interest you. Therefore, if you are going to go with 4, check out the changelogs and bug fixes in 5 before making your final decision.

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