Is there support for qt as a backend?

[roydbt]

Almost two years ago, it was stated that there is work to bring a qt backend for this project, and since there I couldn't find any other mention of it. Where does it stand today?

[stackotter]

Thanks for opening this issue! It’s of course known to me already, but it’s good to have a tracking issue. Here’s the current state of QtBackend, and my future Qt-related plans;

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The old QtBackend source code still lives in this repository, but got broken when I refactored the whole view layout system. I decided to drop a few of the less commonly used backends when undergoing all of the refactoring in order to be able to move a bit faster (as a solo developer helped by occasional volunteer contributions).

I do plan to revive Qt support at some point but that depends on how my priorities pan out (given that I’ve got a lot to do to make SwiftCrossUI a more legitimate UI framework). One of the main issues that I’d like to fix in doing so would be updating to Qt 6 because the old one was stuck on Qt 5 and the library I was using (Longhanks/qlift) is both unmaintained and stuck on Qt 5.

Recently @kkostov expressed some interest in helping out with reviving Qt backend. They’ve currently got the beginnings of some Qt 6 bindings for Swift, along with a yet-to-be-implemented QtBackend stub, in the QwiftUI repository.

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Tl;dr keep an eye on this space, but probably don’t expect a fully fledged QtBackend in the near future unless someone funds some work on it (because my time is currently constrained and I have to prioritise)

[roydbt]

Thanks so much for the quick reply! Good to know the Qt backend wasn't forgotten

[stackotter]

Thanks so much for the quick reply!

No worries!

And I meant to add, for anyone coming across this issue in the future; the reason that I want to support both Gtk and Qt, when Gtk suffices to support Linux, is that Gtk doesn’t feel native on KDE-based distributions, and many people feel strongly about Gtk apps on KDE and Qt apps on GNOME. Qt also has better performance iirc (although Gtk doesn’t set a very high bar, or a bar at all for that matter).

[kkostov]

Hey folks, just to give an update on QwiftUI - I'm definitely committed to having a Qt backend with Swift as we're planning to use it for one of our upcoming apps for Linux and Windows.

I'm taking a few weeks of holiday but overall work is progressing well on both the interop and the "Qt6Backend". The biggest challenge so far has been implementing a layout abstraction which is both Qt-y and Swift-y to fit into the SwiftCrossUI's approach but overall no blockers. There is no specific timeline, but I'm hoping to push an update and a PR soon-ish so you could take it from there for a full SwiftCrossUI implementation 🚀 . I'm really quite excited :)