Release 3.7.0: Build Your Desktop Qt App with Cloud Builds and Preview Code with Online QML Web Editor

This post of the Felgo 3.7.0 series highlights the Felgo tooling improvements that come with the latest update. The QML Web Editor features a new WebAssembly Live Preview and you can now use Felgo Cloud Builds to build Qt projects for desktop like you are used to for Android or iOS. Finally, the new release also brings a lot of improvements for QML Hot Reload for Felgo Live.

Apart from these tooling improvements, Felgo 3.7.0 is packed with lots of new features as well. We already covered them in the previous posts of this series:

• Bluetooth LE (Low Energy) with QML, Apple Sign In, Secure Keychain Storage
  Felgo 3.7.0 brings many components, features, improvements and fixes to the SDK. Most prominently, you can now use Bluetooth LE from QML in your Qt and Felgo apps. 
• The New Developer App and the Best Examples and Demos for You
  With the new Felgo Developer App, you get a mighty tool to support you during development. Explore and run a big variety of components with usage examples, find demo applications that match your desired features, and access the source code or documentation to see how it all works.
• Native App Integration: Integrate Felgo and Qt with Existing Android and iOS Applications
  Felgo allows you to create powerful standalone apps on multiple platforms. With Native App Integration, it is also possible to embed Qt/Felgo views into existing native apps for iOS and Android. This makes mixing native technologies with QML or porting applications much easier.

Build Your Qt Project in the Cloud for Windows, Mac & Linux Desktop

After developing an application you want to build and release it for a variety of target platforms. This is a major undertaking, as you need to set up and maintain a build environment for each platform.

As an application grows, you usually have to create a lot of major or minor builds for testing and new releases. Regardless of the target platforms, Felgo Cloud Builds simplifies this process for any Qt or Felgo project.

In addition to platforms like Android and iOS, Felgo Cloud Builds now also builds for Windows, macOS and Linux Desktop - with a central and stable build environment.

Felgo Cloud Builds compiles and packages your Qt or Felgo project for all chosen platforms at once. For each build target, you get a .zip archive that contains your desktop app with a ready-to-use executable. The windeployqt and macdeployqt tools are already applied, so you don’t need to worry about runtime dependencies anymore.

Notarization: Get Friends with SmartScreen on Windows and Gatekeeper on macOS

Modern operating systems like Windows or macOS all include a so-called “Gatekeeper”. It is a piece of technology that protects users from running malicious software on their computer. 

SmartScreen, the gatekeeper on Windows, stops an application from an unidentified source and shows a warning dialog when you are about to open it. 

You can still start the application but it is not obvious how to get around this dialog at first glance. Also, most users will not run an application that the operating system considers malicious and insecure.

The gatekeeper software of the latest macOS versions is even more restrictive, as it blocks unsigned applications without exception. Only notarized applications pass the security check. This means that they have to be signed and whitelisted by Apple. SmartScreen implements a similar process. It will not interfere with signed applications that are known by the servers.

To prevent errors and code-sign your binaries, you can enable and configure signing in the build settings of the desktop targets.

This is an important step when you publish your application, and Felgo Cloud Builds can do it for you.

Git SSH Key Generation, Apple Distribution Certificates and More

Along with the desktop support, there have been many more improvements to Cloud Builds:

• Automatic Git SSH Key Generation: To make the project setup easier, Cloud Builds can now automatically generate an SSH Key you can copy to e.g. GitHub or GitLab. You do not require to create own access keys for integrating your repository then.
  
  
• Support for Apple Distribution Certificates: The update brings major improvements to the iOS certificate management and signing. In addition to iOS Distribution certificates, Apple Distribution certificates are now supported as well. The log output also gives more insights into possible signing configuration issues. You get more information about the certificate and profiles, and incorrect credentials are detected and reported before attempting to build and sign the app. This saves a lot of time until the point where you get your first build up and running.
  
  
• Improved UI: Along with the changes to include the new build targets, the Cloud Builds UI got brushed up in general. For example, you can now expand or collapse the list of Build Jobs for a project to toggle the Job Details.
  
  
• Stability and Performance Improvements: What is an update without “performance improvements” nowadays? ;-) The latest version comes with many fixes under the hood. The overall performance for parallel builds with many target platforms was improved as well.

New Live Preview with the Online QML Web Editor

Felgo for WebAssembly (WASM) allows execution of Qt/Felgo apps on all compatible browsers. Built on top of this, the Felgo QML Web Editor is now equipped with a Live Preview to see and run QML code snippets directly in your browser.

The Web Preview is a great tool to support you during development. When exploring the Felgo documentation and components, you can open an example in the Web Editor to test and preview the code:

import Felgo 3.0
 
App {
  Page {
    AppText {
      text: "Hello World"
      anchors.centerIn: parent
    }
  }
}