We are using an Apalis imx6 SOM on our custom board and the latest Boot2 Qt image from Toradex.
We are porting several applications frim Windows CE which use use standard dialogs boxes. Nothing exotic or special. I am using a fully licensed version of Qt and Qt Creator for development. I can develop and deploy our first application to the SOM but ALL of the basic dialog boxes do not have a a caption or title bar? This is a problem since some of our apps have 30+ modeless dialogs of which several need to be opened at the same time, hence the dialogs will need to be moved around via the title bar like a standard dialog box on most OS’s. I’ve scoured several forums about this, and the consensus is the Linux OS image needs a window manager component and perhaps a renderer?
What do we need to do with this Toradex Boot2 Qt Linux image to give us the dialog functionality we need? Thank you.
Thanks Drew, I am a little perplexed since the OS image I am using was built by Toradex.
I am new to Linux in general and trying to understand the landscape. From what I have discovered, and again I am new to Linux and perhaps I am missing something, the Boot2Qt image available from Toradex proports to support Qt development. I believe the Toradex Boot2Qt image comes with Qt 5.1.14 installed within the image and allows the developer to use the Qt GUI IDE named Qt Creator. The use of Qt Creator is functional and you can develop and deploy a Qt application to your target board but the issue is as I stated in my original note, any dialog boxes you have within your application do not render correctly. The dialogs do not have a title bar hence they cannot be moved around like other operating systems. The solution is the OS image, Toradex Boot2Qt OS image in the case, must at least have a minimal desktop shell and / or some kind of Window manager. The window manager is responsible for rendering some aspects of a standard dialog box. It seems (I could be incorrect) as though the Toradex Boot2Qt image does not have even a minimal shell and / or window manger within the OS image which would render dialog boxes correctly.
The QT images are provided as part of our partner program. We don’t generate the images and can only provide indirect support for them while the primary support is coming from the vendors. I’ve reached out internally to see if I can find an appropriate engineering contact at QT to review this ticket.
The Boot2Qt images by default don’t use any windows manager. This means that normally a single Qt application is running in fullscreen mode without any window decorations, which causes the effects with the dialog boxes you’ve seen. If you have a need for a Window manager, there are few options available.
Boot2Qt images do not support X11, instead you can use a Wayland based compositor to provide more desktop fell UI. Boot2Qt images include Weston as a reference implementation of a Wayland compositor. You can also use QtWayland to implement your own compositor or try out one of the example compositors it already provides.
In any case, if you have commercial Qt license, I recommend getting in touch directly with Qt Support for further assistance.
Thank you very much for this information. We (Mirion) have a full license with Qt and we are a large consumer of Toradex SOM’s. We reached out to Qt for assistance weeks ago with this seemingly simple issue but did not get the basic answers we needed. After reaching out to Qt and this forum, we had to spent around 6 work days researching on our own and conveyed what we learned to our Linux OS contractor in that we needed a window manage and compositor built into our image. They built us a simple minimal Wayland image which now works well. It’s been VERY VERY frustrating for us having reached out for assistance to our two suppliers with no useable information. Our test apps have MANY dialogs boxes so a single full screen app would not suffice. Again, we are very appreciative of your response!!!
