The Romanian software developer Bogdan Vatra has announced a first alpha version of his Qt implementation for the Android mobile operating system. The release might be timed just right for many developers, since Nokia has, in the context of its cooperation with Microsoft, announced that it does not intend to develop a Windows Phone variant of the GUI framework. On the other hand, more than a few Qt users are probably interested in developing software for Android devices rather than using Silverlight or the XNA framework to develop software for Microsoft's mobile platform.

What Vatra has developed, independently from Nokia and Google, is not called Qt for Android or anything similar, it is called the Necessitas Suite. Vatra says in his announcement that Nokia recommended avoiding the use of "Qt" in the name, and that Google didn't answer his email about using "Android". The developer explicitly points out that the framework is currently in alpha state: the API is not stable, and he recommends that developers not deploy any apps created with it on Google's Android Market. The release is considered important because it is intended as an incentive for developers to start building a community around this project.

For this purpose, developers are provided with the Ministro installer for system-wide shared Qt libraries, with the Qt framework, and with an Android version of the Qt Creator development environment. Documentation files offering installation and programming instructions are also available. The Necessitas Suite source code is released under the terms of the BSD licence.

(ehe)