Welcome to April's Newsletter from KDAB

It must be spring! Blogs are sprouting out all over 🌱 😊

We kick off with Part 3 of Mixing C++ and Rust for Fun and Profit, followed by Embedding the Servo Web Engine in Qt and Recursive Instantiation with Qt Quick and JSON. 

Then we offer two new blogs in our Embedded Development series, and, still on the embedded theme, some videos on Reducing Your Qt Embedded Development Cycle Time plus a report (with demos) from Embedded World 2024. 

After that, there's the Qt 6.7 release, and a different kind of glimpse into the open source contributor world, with GCompris in India.

Lastly, you will find important updates on coming events in 2024, including next month's Oxidize conference in Berlin, where the focus is on Industrial Rust Use. Enjoy!

Mixing C++ and Rust for Fun and Profit

Part 3: How not to invent the wheel

by Loren Burkholder

In the two previous posts (Part 1 and Part 2), we looked at how to build bindings between C++ and Rust from scratch.

However, while building a binding generator from scratch is fun, it’s not necessarily an efficient way to integrate Rust into your C++ project. 

Let’s look at some existing technologies for mixing C++ and Rust that you can easily deploy today.

Read on.

Embedding the Servo Web Engine in Qt

Using CXX-Qt to integrate a web rendering engine written in Rust

by Andrew Hayzen and Magnus Groß

The Rust ecosystem has been brewing up a new web rendering engine called Servo.... , now under the stewardship of the Linux Foundation....

At KDAB we managed to embed the Servo web engine inside Qt, by using our CXX-Qt library as a bridge between Rust and C++. 

This means that we can now use Servo as an alternative to Chromium for webviews in Qt applications.

Read the blog.

More about CXX-Qt.
About Servo. 

Recursive Instantiation with Qt Quick and JSON - Factory Design Techniques, Part 1

by Javier O. Cordero Pérez

This is the first in a series of blogs Javier has written, in response to a request for an architecture for remote real time instantiation and updating of arbitrary QML components.

This entry shows how you can use a simple variation of the factory method pattern in QML for instantiating arbitrary components.

Read the blog.

Mastering the Embedded Update Process

 - the first of our two new blogs on Embedded

by Andreas Holzammer

The importance of updating your product after it’s in the field cannot be overstated. Not only is it essential for customer satisfaction with feature updates and bug fixes, but also for addressing security vulnerabilities. 

In this post, we’ll look at some key considerations and methodologies for updating embedded systems.

Read on.

Streamlining Strategies for Embedded Software Development

by Nathan Collins

Developing embedded software is notoriously difficult – how can we simplify the process? Fortunately, there are lots of techniques you can use daily . . .

Read on.

Reducing Qt Devpt. Embedded Cycle Time

Video series from Christoph Sterz

Christoph Sterz is known for his ability to make the impossible possible, producing top-class results, often on limited hardware. This month he added three more videos to this series, where he reveals some of the tricks he's learnt over the years that save time on embedded. Check them out.

Installing GammaRay on your Embedded Target

A 7 minute tutorial on Christoph's favorite debugging tool for Qt apps.

Embedded GammaRay in Action

Some surprising and useful ways you didn't know GammaRay can help.

Find more tutorials for GammaRay here.

Deploy Faster!

Learn how to bundle your executables and much more, in this 17 minute master class from Christoph.

Hotspot v1.5.0 released

The Linux perf GUI for Performance Analysis

One of KDAB's most successful R&D projects gets a major update.

Hotspot v1.5.0 comes packed with a wealth of code cleanups, bug fixes and new functionality. Most notably, the disassembly view has been further improved with better searching, highlighting and faster performance. 

Find out more.

Check out the changelog.

Qt 6.7 is released

with support from C++ 20

Just in case you hadn't noticed, earlier this month Qt released its latest version, with lots of updates, big and small. Check out the details here or, if you want to go deeper, in the release notes. 

Way down at the bottom of that page the many folk who made this release possible are listed, including around fifteen or so from KDAB. Hats off to all of them, and thanks!

GCompris in India

An example of its global spread, from a contributor's perspective

The final episode in our series about this open source teaching aid, supported by KDE. 

It's amazing how, the things these folk get up to (mostly in their spare time), can cheer you up, even on a bad hair day ;-)

Watch the video.

Events

Last month's Embedded World 2024 in Nuremberg, Germany, went amazingly well, with attendee numbers up to pre-pandemic level and lots of visitors to KDAB's booth. 

Check out the 5 on-site videos about some of the demos we had on display -->.

More about our presence at Embedded World. We'll be back next year!

A selection of events to come in 2024 follows.

Oxidize, 05/28-30

Berlin, Germany

"Two day of applied insights from Rust innovators" 

We're co-hosting, with Ferrous Systems and Slint. Come and talk to us about C++ and Rust.

With workshops on May 28th, and a talks program on May 29th-30th that includes Building an LLM pre-training data pipeline in Rust at Aleph Alpha, you don't want to miss this one.

Check out the program and sign up!

FlutterCon, 07/3-5

Berlin, Germany

We're silver sponsors and will be exhibiting and running a workshop. Speakers TBA after May 1st. Save the dates!

SIGGRAPH, 07/28-08/01

Denver, USA

Registration is now open! 
Check out the options and register. 
Best rates if you register by Friday, 17th May.

Qt Contributor Summit, 09/5-6 

Würzburg, Germany

Attention Qt Developers! This event is now back-to-back with KDE Akademy in the same town. Save the dates!!

KDE Akademy, 09/7-12

Würzburg, Germany

The call for proposals is out for talks on Sept 7th and 8th. Submit a talk!

CppCon, 09/15-20

Aurora, Colorado, USA

Get ready for the biggest and best C++ conference in the world. Save the dates!

RustLab, 11/9-11

Florence, Italy

The call for proposals is open. There'll be two kinds of talks: 25-min 'inspirational' and 40-min 'deep-dives', all in English and it happens in Florence. What's not to love?!

Meeting C++ 2024, 11/14-16

Berlin, Germany & online

With C++ committee members likely to be passing through (and giving talks) en route to the ISO C++ meeting in Poland a week later, it's not to be missed. Save the dates!