Update to the Qt version shipped with PyQt5

[Florian Bruhin]

On Wed, Dec 07, 2022 at 09:54:25PM +0000, Phil Thompson wrote:
> On 07/12/2022 11:58, Carlos Pereira Atencio wrote:
> > That's a pity, thanks for clarifying Phil.
> > I've seen these binaries mentioned a few times, but I am not 100%
> > sure how they are obtained. Are these part of the offline installers
> > from this page?
> > https://www.qt.io/offline-installers

Probably the normal QT online installer, given that the offline
installers turned commercial-only for whatever reason (and so did LTS
releases like Qt 5.15):
https://www.qt.io/blog/qt-offering-changes-2020

> > Do you think there is a chance they'll update the 5.15.x binaries at
> > some
> > point? Or has the Qt stopped producing them?
> 
> Given they want everybody to move to Qt6 I'd be very surprised if they would
> release binaries.

Not only that - they technically don't even release sources anymore[1]
(except for commercial license holders). The only reason we still get
source releases (delayed by a year!) is because that's the bare minimum
they are forced to do thanks to the agreement with the KDE Free Qt
Foundation[2] ("All parts of Qt are available under the GPLv3 or under a
compatible license. [...] If these license terms are not yet present at
the time of the Qt release, then they must be applied within a timeframe
of not more than 12 months.").

And it's *really* the bare minimum, you don't even get changelogs /
release notes anymore without a commercial license...[3]

KDE has stepped in to fill the gap[4], but that's explictly just a set
of patches[5].

I can totally understand that Phil doesn't want to build Qt from sources
for every release. Been there before as well, and it's a major pain,
especially if you need to do it on three different platforms.

So, unless some reliable third-party magically steps up to maintain Qt
5.15 binaries (which seems highly unlikely, given that Qt 6 has been
around for two years now...), this won't happen.

Then again, Qt 6 is a thing, it's sufficiently stable and comprehensive
for probably like 99% of projects to switch to, and (unless you're
maintaining a huge QtWebEngine codebase or so...), the changes required
to migrate from PyQt5 should be manageable.

So, long story short: You probably shouldn't be using PyQt5 anymore.

(Sorry for the long rant. How Qt turns more and more commercial is
worrying.)

Florian

[1] https://lists.qt-project.org/pipermail/development/2021-January/040798.html
[2] https://kde.org/community/whatiskde/kdefreeqtfoundation/
[3] https://wiki.qt.io/Qt_5.15_Release#Release_Notes
    https://code.qt.io/cgit/qt/qtreleasenotes.git/tree/qt
[4] https://dot.kde.org/2021/04/06/announcing-kdes-qt-5-patch-collection
[5] https://community.kde.org/Qt5PatchCollection#Will_there_be_releases.3F

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