Trolltech has released a “technology preview” port of its Qt development framework to Microsoft Windows CE. The Qt/WinCE download is said to include nearly all of Qt's 400 C++ class libraries, with the goal of letting developers build Linux, Mac, Windows, and Windows CE binaries from the same code base.

The Qt/WinCE tech preview download is reportedly based on Qtopia Core 4.3. The only modules not included in the ported API are QtOpenGL and Qt3Support, according to the company.

In an exclusive interview with our sister publication, WindowsForDevices, CEO Haavard Nord emphasized that the primary goal of the development effort is to ensure that multi-platform applications run equally well on Windows and Windows CE/Mobile. However, Qt/WinCE should also in theory enable embedded Linux and embedded Windows applications to be built from the same code base, since the Qt API is the same across all supported platforms (Windows, Windows CE, Mac OS X, Linux, embedded Linux, and Java).

Nord said Trolltech has no current plans to port anything beyond the functions implemented by Qtopia Core to Windows CE and Windows Mobile. However, he did not rule out the future possibility of porting Qtopia Phone Edition to Windows CE — a port that, like Intrinsyc's Soleus stack, could increase the diversity and customizability of Windows-based mobile phone OSes.

Lots more details can be found in the complete, in-depth coverage from WindowsForDevices, here.

In other Trolltech news, the company recently announced that it was tapped to create a native Linux application development kit for Motorola's Linux-based mobile phones.

 
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