FlightGear Qt launcher

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Background

the launcher is not run by default :) This is because it was created as a Mac only solution. We need to have the discussion if it should become the default launcher for Windows (Linux and other Unixes are less relevant, it’s up to the distribution packagers). You can test the launcher by passing the ‘—launcher’ argument, or setting the FG_LAUNCHER env var. These options exist to allow a Windows shortcut, .desktop file on Linux or the app bundle’s Info.plist to set the value when started from the GUI. And if you run fgfs via the command line with some options, you don’t get troubled by the launcher - the idea being to minimise how much of my life I spend being shouted at by the Internet. Which is already way more than I would like. Note the launcher on ‘next’ will be in flux shortly as I add some new features - support for the aircraft package manager especially, and for specifying some directory locations to support ‘code only’ nightly builds which use an existing FGData download. — James Turner (2015-02-27). Re: [Flightgear-devel] Qt launcher requirement bump in Flightgear git. (powered by Instant-Cquotes)

Status

Related to Qt, I can say that up to now - as far as I can tell - only a simple replacement for the Mac Launcher has been introduced. This is not related to the internal user interface of FlightGear, at least for now. If, how and when the internal gui can leverage Qt is under investigation and in such an early state that those responsible preferred to not announce anything yet. If this ever happens, this will be discussed on the mailing list — Torsten (Sun Jan 11). Re: FlightGear GUI hell: PUI, Canvas GUI, Mongoose, . (powered by Instant-Cquotes)

Dependencies

Qt is only needed for the launcher feature, which is automatically disabled if it is not found. — Rebecca N. Palmer (2015-02-26). Re: [Flightgear-devel] FGData splitting / assembling the base package. (powered by Instant-Cquotes)

If CMake does not find QT5 then it skips the QT launcher compilation — Bertrand Coconnier (2015-02-26). Re: [Flightgear-devel] Qt launcher requirement bump in Flightgear git. (powered by Instant-Cquotes)

Variants

I had a problem with the Qt-launcher for Mac, that we have no way to identify the ‘main’ variant of an aircraft, which can cause confusing UI for new users. Going forwards I’d like a -set.xml tag to identify the main variant, this would help the aircraft packaging logic, unless anyone has a better solution? — James Turner (2015-02-05). Re: [Flightgear-devel] FlightGear 3.4 RC1 (Windows) feedback. (powered by Instant-Cquotes)