GNU bug report logs - #53011
Possible to Update qtbase-5 to v5.15.8?

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From: Philip McGrath <philip <at> philipmcgrath.com>
To: Florian Bruhin <me <at> the-compiler.org>, Jaft <wamm_kd_schmelingski <at> yahoo.com>, Leo Famulari <leo <at> famulari.name>, 53011 <at> debbugs.gnu.org
Subject: bug#53011: Possible to Update qtbase-5 to v5.15.8?
Date: Wed, 5 Jan 2022 02:07:48 -0500

Hi,

On 1/4/22 13:04, Florian Bruhin wrote:
> Hey,
> 
> qutebrowser upstream here.
> 
> On Tue, Jan 04, 2022 at 05:35:54PM +0000, Jaft wrote:
>> Partially because it's the latest version but primarily because there's a bug in the current version for QTwebengine.
> 
> Note that qtbase releases after 5.15.2 are commercial-only
> unfortunately:
> 
> https://www.qt.io/blog/qt-offering-changes-2020
> https://www.qt.io/blog/commercial-lts-qt-5.15.3-released
> 
> However, QtWebEngine source releases are exempt from that, due to
> containing third-party LGPL code, so its source for newer releases is
> publicly available:
> https://code.qt.io/cgit/qt/qtwebengine.git/refs/tags
> 
> Most distributions I'm aware of are still keeping updated with those
> releases, as they should work just fine against an older qtbase.
> 
> Alternatively, to fix the issues with missing text, backporting this
> patch should suffice:
> https://codereview.qt-project.org/c/qt/qtwebengine-chromium/+/374232
> 
> However, newer QtWebEngine releases come with a variety of security
> fixes and even a Chromium upgrade (from 83 to 87), so I'd highly
> recommend keeping it up to date.
> 
> Florian
> 

As some of you may know, KDE maintains a carefully curated patch 
collection for Qt 5 consisting strictly of backports from the current 
(QT6-based) development branch of Qt and fixes for removed 
functionality. (They do not increment the Qt version number, to avoid 
any further confusion.) AIUI, this is the same way The Qt Company 
creates their non-public releases for customers using non-free licenses 
(or at least it's what they say they do), though the KDE developers, 
quite reasonably, only backport patches of interest to free software.

Announcement: 
https://dot.kde.org/2021/04/06/announcing-kdes-qt-5-patch-collection
FAQ: https://community.kde.org/Qt5PatchCollection

Using these patches should be as easy as pointing the origin of the 
relevant Guix packages to the kde/5.15 branches of the corresponding 
repositories, e.g. <https://invent.kde.org/qt/qt/qtbase/-/tree/kde/5.15>.

I think this would be the best way to update Guix's qtbase-5 and other 
packages in general. But, as Florian explains, the situation with 
QtWebEngine is even less complicated.

-Philip

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