Necessitas is the project bringing Qt to the Android operating system. It has recently become part of KDE and now celebrates its second alpha release - its first as part of KDE.

Lead developer Bogdan Vatra explains the reasons for making Necessitas a KDE project:

"YES, we've joined KDE, because we share the same goals; to make Qt more powerful, more accessible, and to keep it free for everyone."

This new release brings lots of changes:

Support for SSL

QtWebKit 2.1 with JIT support, which is 2.5x times faster than in the previous release

Qt Creator 2.2

A preview of QtMobility

GDB 7.2 with Python support

Fixes for the most annoying bugs

Necessitas is now easier to install and update thanks to the switch to Nokia's SDK Installer. It also has the option to install Google's official SDKs and NDK automatically, and is available for Windows.

This is an important project for KDE, as having full Qt support in Android is the first step toward running KDE software on many more mobile devices. And both Necessitas and KDE have the same goals related to Qt. If you are interested, you can subscribe to the mailing list, and if you give it a try, don't forget to report bugs.

Please remember this is an alpha release; it's not yet ready for production. More news after the Qt Contributors' Summit in June.