VTK - Qt versions poll....

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1

I’m about to embark upon a new project using VTK and Qt and wondering what versions of each play well together?

Which versions are any of you using together in a desktop application?

Thanks
Rick

2

ParaView ships with Qt 5.15.4 and the most recent version of VTK of course.

3

In 3D Slicer we use Qt-5.15.x, too. We’ll probably switch to Qt-6 in about 6-12 months.

I would recommend to always use the same VTK and Qt versions that ParaView and 3D Slicer is using, as these applications are continuously tested on all Windows, Linux, and macOS by thousands of users on different hardware, so all commonly occurring issues get reported and fixed. This will save you a lot on software support and maintenance.

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4

In my case, Qt 5.12 works well with VTK 9.1.

5

Thanks for all the replies. I’m wonder if anyone has tried 6? I notice the VTK cmake GUI let’s me choose it.

Thanks

Rick

6

It is supported but without actual testing in the CI, I’d not recommend it.

7

Qt has a pretty bad track record with major updates. After a major update it typically takes at least 5-10 minor releases for the library to become stable and feature-complete again. They are still at just Qt-6.4, so I would not rush the update.

That said, Qt stopped providing long-term support releases for free, so Qt-5.x bugfixes and platform updates are only available if you buy Qt or move to Qt-6.x. So, probably most people will need to update to Qt-6.x within a year or so.

8

KDE has a open fork that backport Qt6 patches, it works great.

pacman -Ss qt5-base
extra/qt5-base 5.15.5+kde+r170-1

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9

Thanks for the information, this can be useful (although probably patches are not provided for Windows and macOS specific issues, and most likely pre-built binary pckages only available for KDE).