With all the fanfare and trumping about Qt 6.0 a small but important part of documentation may have been overlooked: The Qt for Device Creation documentation got a major facelift and reorganization. As part of that we took feedback and needs from our hardware partners and created something that can be described as a Qt Board Support Package, QBSP cookbook.
QBSP for a super-easy developer tooling setup
The QBSP contains all the Qt Creator IDE configurations for deployment, debugging and profiling, as well as the toolchain and embedded target software required for embedded development. In other words, a developer can set up an embedded target on their IDE by simply installing a QBSP package instead of clicking around and manually configuring the environment.
QBSP files are created by The Qt Company, or by HW vendors and sometimes even community members.
The enhanced documentation makes it easier for partners to cook up easy getting started images, and perhaps come up with dedicated, optimized and use case specific device target images such as, e.g., WebEngine, Multimedia, headless data processing, or other such specific use cases.
Readymade QBSP files are available for download either directly under Qt online Installer, or separately under Qt account (select the QBSP option under Product menu). QBSP files may also be found from HW vendor specific sites.
Partner agreement required to distribute commercial Qt
A QBSP file can be based on either open source or commercial Qt. When operating and creating HW support images under open source license the corresponding open source license terms and conditions naturally need to be followed, and one cannot include commercial-only features in to the QBSP.
The commercial Qt License Agreement 4 explicitly forbids the distribution of commercial Qt or parts of it without a valid license. The rights to distribute Commercial Qt require a partnership agreement between a HW vendor and The Qt Company. If you are interested in such a partnership agreement, please get in touch with us through https://www.qt.io/contact-us/partner-inquiry
If you already have a QBSP…
If you already have a QBSP created for your board you can contacts us through https://www.qt.io/contact-us/partner-inquiry-qbsp to get it verified and added to the Qt delivery channels.
The available documentation is focused on Yocto based Embedded Linux and Qt 6, but it can be used for understanding the basics of how to create board support packages covering other operating systems, or earlier Qt 5 releases.
Read all QBSP blogposts here.
