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A Yocto Recipe for Qt Applications Built with CMake

How hard can it be to write a Yocto recipe for building a Qt application with CMake? Actually, it turns out to be pretty hard. I have seen my fair share of slow-and-dirty workarounds (nothing is ever quick with Yocto, not even the diry workarounds) how to force the Qt application into the Linux image and onto the device. Over the years, I turned my own slow-and-dirty workarounds into a hopefully quick-and-clean solution. Here it comes.

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Using Qt 6 under LGPLv3

The Qt Company changed Qt licensing in February 2022. All the separate commercial packages – including Qt for MCU, Qt Safe Renderer, Qt Automotive Suite and Qt Automation – were folded into two Qt for Device Creation licenses: Professional and Enterprise. The Qt Marketplace license for modules like CoAP, MQTT, Charts and for the design tool bridges was discontinued. My post helps you answer the crucial question: Shall you use Qt Commercial or Qt LGPL-3.0?

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Creating A Custom Yocto Layer

After having built the reference Linux image from a SoM, SoC or terminal maker and having run it on the board, we must inevitably custom-tailor this image to our needs. We must create our own Yocto layer. We must remove all the unnecessary packages and make our core application start automatically on power-up. Here is a step-by-step guide how to turn the application layer for a Toradex Verdin iMX8M Plus board into our own custom layer. The guide should also work for other boards.

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My Talk “Hexagonal Architecture: The Standard for Qt Embedded Applications” at Meeting Embedded 2021

I gave a talk at Meeting Embedded 2021 on 4 November 2021. First, I introduced the hexagonal architecture (a.k.a. ports-and-adapters architecture) in general. Then, I showed a walking skeleton of the architecture for a harvester terminal.

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Ports-and-adapters architecture for harvester terminal with GUI, Cloud, Machine and Customer adapter.

My Talk “A Successful Architecture for Qt Embedded Systems” at Qt Day Italy 2021

Creating an architecture means answering many questions about the ecosystem, in which the Qt embedded system operates. While the questions are very similar for all Qt embedded systems, the answers and their priorities differ. So, you should be able to transfer the questions and answers from my running example, a harvester terminal, to your system.

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Window manager showing split view of home (left) and of turbine cam (right).

Architecture of Qt Embedded Systems: Single vs. Multiple GUI Applications

Our quest for a successful architecture of a harvester terminal continues. In this episode, we discuss when a system with a single application is good enough and when a system with multiple applications and a window manager is the better choice. Sometimes, a single-application system with a window manager is just the right choice.

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Application on monitor in portait orientation powered by Verdin i.MX8M Mini.

Showing Wayland Compositor Fullscreen in Portrait Orientation

Our Qt embedded system is displayed on a monitor mounted in portrait orientation. The system runs the Wayland compositor Weston as a window manager. HMI applications are shown rotated by 90 degrees – in landscape orientation. The system toolbar of Weston is visible. How can we configure Weston so that the applications are shown in portrait orientation and so that the system toolbar is removed?

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