Upcoming Qt switch to OpenGL ES on arm64

[John Paul Adrian Glaubitz]

> On Nov 22, 2018, at 10:30 PM, Marcin Juszkiewicz <marcin at juszkiewicz.com.pl> wrote:
> 
> W dniu 22.11.2018 o 19:37, Dmitry Shachnev pisze:
> 
>> The Qt framework can be built either with “desktop” OpenGL, or with OpenGL ES
>> support. At the moment we are building it with OpenGL ES on armel and armhf,
>> and with desktop OpenGL on all other architectures.
>> 
>> However we have received a request [1] from two different persons to add arm64
>> to the list of architectures where OpenGL ES is used.
>> 
>> We want your feedback! If you are using an arm64 device or board with Qt,
>> please let us know your opinion about this change, by replying to this mail
>> or to [1], and describe your use case.
> 
> Does it mean that arm64 box with PCI Express graphics card will be not
> able to use Qt based software? I can put Radeon or NVidia card into my
> box and use it as a normal OpenGL accelerated desktop (did that already
> few years ago).

Correct. After this switch, Qt on arm64 will be forced into embedded mode when it comes to graphics.

Not sure whether it’s the right decision to be made. Might be an idea to ask more users on their opinions on this issue.

Granted, I don’t really know what the real world distribution of embedded and desktop/server/laptop devices of arm64 is.  But I could imagine that there will be more arm64 devices in the future which are desktops, servers or laptops.

Adrian