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// Copyright (C) 2023 The Qt Company Ltd.
// SPDX-License-Identifier: LicenseRef-Qt-Commercial OR GFDL-1.3-no-invariants-only
/*!
\page whatsnew.html
\ingroup qtappman
\ingroup qtappman-highlights
\title What's New
\brief Important changes in Qt Application Manager
\section1 Qt ApplicationManager 6.7
The application manager now has full support for QML tooling (like compilation) for System UIs
and applications. The \l{Application Features Example}{application-features example} was adapted
to makes use of these new features.
In order to achieve this, large parts of the QML object implementations had to be rewritten. This
means that some APIs are no longer backwards-compatible.
We tried to keep the changes to a minimum and provide compatibility aliases where possible, but
some changes were unavoidable.
The most important change is that ApplicationManagerWindow is now derived from QObject in
both single- and multi-process applications (before it was derived from \l FocusScope in
single-process mode and \l Window in multi-process mode). While there are negative and positive
implications for multi-process applications, these include a lot of benefits for single-process
or mixed-mode applications, where there is now a consistent API with a lot more common functionality
for all cases:
\list
\li The new API closely mirrors Qt's existing \l{Window} API, including the attached properties.
\li Tracking the window's \l{ApplicationManagerWindow::}{active} state and its
\l{ApplicationManagerWindow::}{activeFocusItem} is now supported also in single-process mode.
\li There still is full access to the \l{ApplicationManagerWindow::}{backingObject} (\l Window
or \l Item) if needed.
\endlist
There are also changes to the private C++ API that might affect you if you are implementing plugins
and custom appman or launcher executables:
\list
\li Defines for configurable features (e.g. \c AM_MULTI_PROCESS) have been removed, as the same
functionality is already available via Qt's feature macro (e.g.
\c {QT_CONFIG(am_multi_process)}).
\li As the application manager supports building against older Qt versions (down to the latest
LTS release), you now also get application manager specific version defines similar to the
Qt ones (\c{ QT_AM_VERSION{,_STR,_MAJOR,_MINOR,_PATCH} }).
\li The module \c Qt::AppManLauncherPrivate was renamed to \c Qt::AppManApplicationMainPrivate
and the class \c LauncherMain to \c ApplicationMain to better reflect their purpose: this
module started as the basis for the QML launcher but evolved into a generic building block
for launchers as well as native applications alike.
\endlist
In addition, here are some additional, noteworthy changes:
\list
\li The \l{Bubblewrap Container} plugin is now a lot more flexible when it comes to kernel
namespace (un)sharing.
\li Setting up quick-launching for multiple runtimes and containers is
\l{runtimes-per-container}{much more flexible now}.
\li The ApplicationInstaller singleton that was deprecated in 5.14 has now finally been removed.
\li Along the same lines, dummy-data support was removed. This had been done for the \c qml and
\c qmlscene tools already in Qt 6.3.
\li A new tool named \l{Package-Server}{appman-package-server} has been added that takes over
the role of the deprecated companion project
\l{https://doc.qt.io/QtAutoDeploymentServer/index.html}{Qt Automotive Suite Deployment Server}.
As with the deprecated project, this is not meant to be an app store backend for production,
but rather an easy to use tool for developers or CI environments to test and verify package
installations. This also comes with a new \l{Package Installation Example}{example}.
\endlist
\section1 Qt ApplicationManager 6.6
Two new features have been added:
\list
\li NotificationModel will now complement the existing ApplicationModel and IntentModel classes.
\li The application manager now comes with a \c bubblewrap container integration: this uses the
\l{bubblewrap} utility to create a new kernel namespace and runs the requested binary in
this sandbox isolated from the rest of the system. This is the base technology used in the
\l{Flatpak}{Linux Flatpak ecosystem}. See the \l {Bubblewrap Container Example} for an
example setup with test applications.
\endlist
In addition, there have been some changes in functionality:
\list
\li The IntentServerHandler::visibility property now defaults to \b Public instead of
\b Private, the same way as it works for client-side intent definitions in an app's manifest
file.
\li QML applications will now quit immediately when requested to via
ApplicationManager::stopApplication(), if no handler is connected to the
ApplicationInterface::quit() signal. These applications would have been force-terminated
only after a 250msec timeout before.
\li The quick launch mechanism can now detect broken runtime/container combinations and will
disable them instead of re-trying to start them in an infinite loop. This can be fine tuned
via the new \c failedStartLimit and \c failedStartLimitIntervalSec configuration parameters.
\li In order to support JavaScript's \e strict mode, the \c package role of the PackageManager
singleton had to be renamed to \c packageObject, as \c package is a reserved JS keyword in
strict mode. The old \c package role is still available in non-strict mode. All the other
singleton models got a similar \c *Object alias role to keep the APIs consistent.
\endlist
\section1 Qt ApplicationManager 6.3
The APIs and manifest definitions concerning the Package,
Application and Intent fields for \c icon, \c name and \c description have
been cleaned up.
All three support the same API now, with the package's fields acting as a fallback for both the
application and intent objects.
Due to a clash between the property \c name and the function \c name in ApplicationObject,
user code that called the \c{Application.name(language)} function before, now needs to replace
this with \c{Application.names[language]}.
\section1 Qt Application Manager 6.2
No new APIs were added, but the build system switched from qmake to CMake and
the deprecated legacy \c ApplicationInterfaceExtension IPC mechanism was
finally removed.
A direct replacement for the old IPC had been added in 5.14 already in form of the new \l{Intents}
mechanism.
*/
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