The development package that you get with Qt for Device Creation consists of:

• Qt development libraries and core tools
• Additional embedded libraries and value-add components
• Embedded development environment around Qt Creator IDE
• Boot to Qt, a light-weight software stack for embedded systems
• Build-Your-Own-Stack tooling for customizing the Boot to Qt stack
• Device emulator for software development and testing without target hardware

About Qt Development Libraries

Qt is a full development framework designed to streamline the creation of applications and user interfaces for desktop, embedded, and mobile platforms. With Qt, you can reuse code efficiently to target multiple platforms with one code base. The modular C++ class library and development tools enable developers to create applications for one platform and easily build and deploy on other platforms as well.

The Qt libraries provide high-level APIs for a large variety of both non-GUI and GUI related functionality. For UI creation, Qt provides a number of approaches: traditional C++, declarative UI design with Qt Quick or HTML5/hybrid user interfaces with the Qt WebEngine module.

For overview about Qt libraries see the Qt reference documentation.

Additional Embedded Libraries and Value-Add Components

In addition to the Boot to Qt stack and a comprehensive development environment, Qt for Device Creation comes with a set of components that bring new features and speed up the creation of high-performing, modern UI embedded applications:

• Qt Virtual Keyboard - complete virtual keyboard solution with word-prediction and multiple languages supported.
• Qt Quick Controls 2 - provides a set of controls for building complete user interfaces in Qt Quick.
• Qt Quick Compiler - enables compiling .qml source files into application binaries, improving load times and security for code assets.
• Qt Charts - UI Components for displaying visually pleasing charts, driven by static or dynamic data models.
• Qt Data Visualization - UI Components for creating stunning 3D data visualizations.
• Qt Quick 2D Renderer - enables Qt Quick UIs on GPU-less devices.
• Qt Device Utilities - allows easy access to various embedded device settings.

About the Development Environment

The development environment is built around the Qt Creator IDE. Qt Creator runs on all desktop platforms, but the embedded development environment is currently supported only on 64-bit Linux desktop and Windows.

Device deployment can be done directly from the Qt Creator IDE to a device connected via USB or local area network. The Qt Creator IDE is pre-configured for devices running Boot to Qt but can also be manually configured to build and deploy to custom embedded toolchains and devices.

Alternatively, you can deploy the application locally to the Emulator that is running the same, full software stack as the devices. As with any Qt based application, the same application can be deployed to desktop and mobile OS targets as well.