qtbindings
----------
This project provides bindings that allow the QT Gui toolkit to be used from the
Ruby Programming language. Overall it is a repackaging of a subset of the KDE
bindings ruby and smoke systems into a format that lends itself well to
packaging into a Ruby gem.

Goals
-----
1. To make it easy to install a Qt binding for Ruby on all platforms using
   RubyGems
2. To maintain an up-to-date binary gem for Windows that is bundled with
   the latest version of Qt from http://qt.nokia.com
3. To reduce the scope and maintenance of the bindings to only bind to the
   libraries provided by the Qt SDK.
4. To increase compatibility with non-linux platforms

Note: This gem only supports Ruby 1.9.3 and Ruby 2.0.0 starting at qtbindings version 4.8.5.0.
For Ruby 1.8.x you can try installing version 4.8.3.0, however upgrading Ruby is
highly recommended.

Usage Notes
------------
Ruby threading is now fully supported out of the box. All GUI access however must be done
inside the main thread. To support updating the GUI using other threads, use the following function
provided in Qt4.rb:

Qt.execute_in_main_thread do # block the main thread
  # GUI code which executes and then allows the main thread to execute
end

Qt.execute_in_main_thread(false) do # don't block the main thread
  # GUI code which executes in parallel with the main thread
end

Tested Environments
--------------------
Mac OSX 10.9.1 (Mavericks)
XCode 5 (clang)
Brew - QT 4.8.6
Cmake 2.8.9
Ruby 2.0.0p353 - Must be compiled with clang (rvm install <version> --with-gcc=clang)

Windows XP SP3
QT SDK 4.8.5
Cmake 2.8.8
Ruby 1.9.3p448 and Ruby 2.0.0p353 installed from rubyinstaller.org

Windows 7 SP1
QT SDK 4.8.6
Cmake 2.8.12.2
Ruby 2.0.0p353 installed from rubyinstaller.org

Ubuntu Linux 11.10
QT SDK 4.8.1
Cmake 2.8.5

Compiling
---------
Compiling qtbindings requires the following prerequisites:
1. cmake 2.8.x installed and in your path
2. QT 4.8.x installed and in your path
3. Ruby installed and in your path
4. gcc 4.x (or clang for OSX 10.9)
   For Windows this means getting MingGW-w64 from http://mingw-w64.sourceforge.net/download.php (Win-builds project)

Note for OSX 10.9.  The default compiler has changed from gcc to clang.   All libraries 
need to be compiled with clang or you will get segfaults.  This includes ruby, qt, and qtbindings.
*** rvm does not compile with clang by default.  You must add --with-gcc=clang when installing a version of ruby *** 

Additionally: all of the operating system prequisites for compiling,
window system development, opengl, etc must be installed.

Rakefile
--------
Perform the following steps to build the gem on Unix or Mac:
1. rake VERSION=4.8.x.y gem
     Where the x is the subversion of QT and y is the patch level of qtbindings

Perform the following steps to build the gem on Windows:
1. Ensure you are running Ruby 1.9.3
     ruby -v #=> ruby 1.9.3
2. rake distclean
3. rake build
4. Switch to Ruby 2.0.0
     ruby -v #=> ruby 2.0.0
5. rake build
6. rake VERSION=4.8.x.y gemnative
     Where the x is the subversion of QT and y is the patch level of qtbindings
7. rake VERSION=4.8.x.y gemqt
     Where the x is the subversion of QT and y is the patch level of qtbindings

Note: The gem is built twice to create the FAT binary which will work
on both Ruby 1.9 and 2.0. The Windows utility called pik is useful for
switching between Ruby versions.

After building the gem, verify the examples work by running:
1. rake examples

Operating Systems Notes:

Debian Linux
------------
1. The following should get you the packages you need:
sudo aptitude install build-essential bison openssl libreadline5
  libreadline-dev curl git-core zlib1g zlib1g-dev libssl-dev vim
  libsqlite3-0 libsqlite3-dev sqlite3 libreadline5-dev libreadline6-dev
  libxml2-dev git-core subversion autoconf xorg-dev libgl1-mesa-dev
  libglu1-mesa-dev

Mac OSX Snow Leopard
-----------------------
1. XCode
2. Brew (http://mxcl.github.com/homebrew/)
   Install qt with 'brew install qt'

Windows - Note: Only necessary for debugging (binary gem available)
--------
QT 4.8.6 requires mingw 4.8.2 from http://mingw-w64.sourceforge.net/download.php (Win-builds project)
QT 4.8.5 requires mingw 4.4 from here or elsewhere: http://nosymbolfound.blogspot.com/2012/12/since-until-now-qt-under-windows-is.html#!/2012/12/since-until-now-qt-under-windows-is.html)

Install
------
On linux/MacOSX you must make sure you have all the necessary prerequisites
installed or the compile will fail.

gem install qtbindings

This should always work flawlessly on Windows because everything is nicely
packaged into a binary gem. However, the gem is very large ~90MB, so please
be patient while gem downloads the file.

To get help:
You can file tickets here at github for issues specific to the
qtbindings gem.

License:
This library is released under the LGPL Version 2.1.
See COPYING.LIB.txt

Disclaimer:
Almost all of this code was written by the guys who worked on the KDE
bindings project, particurly Arno Rehn and Richard Dale. I hope to increase
the adoption and use of the code that they have written.