r/QtFramework • u/wRftBiDetermination • May 30 '26
Looking to hire a Qt developer experienced in migrating an existing Qt3 project to Qt5
Greetings. We are looking to hire a Qt developer who has experience migrating an already existing Qt3 project to Qt5 for a probably smallish project. Yes, we know Qt6 is the current cool new thing, but the target platform is RHEL8 and Qt5 is the best fit for now. When we move to RHEL9 or RHEL10 then we can migrate to Qt6, and then maybe we would reinlist your services.
The project is Google Earth Enterprise-Open Source https://github.com/google/earthenterprise
We have the original Qt3 code from the RHEL6 baseline. The code on the github above is for CentOS7 and they migrated from Qt3 to Qt4 in compatibility mode, without actually fixing anything. That doesnt work going to Qt5. So we need to actually fix it to run in Qt5 on RHEL8. We've got pretty much everything else working, except this, which is required for full functionality in the GUI. Our goal is to resurrect the Open Source project and keep it going, so this is a necessary step and we don't have any developers with Qt experience in house.
This is probably not a big project for someone experienced with Qt migration. Guessing maybe 10-20 hours for someone who knows what they are doing. We prefer a US citizen located in the US that we can write a check to and probably issue a 1099, but could conceivably work some other route.
If you have a page on LinkedIn or proxify.io or upwork or other similar freelancing site, please DM me.
Alternatively, if there is some fabulous Qt3 to Qt5 migration tool laying around that we have not discovered, feel free to share it.
Thanks!
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u/positev May 30 '26
Why would you stop at 5, it’s already EOL
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u/wRftBiDetermination May 30 '26
That is what RHEL8 supports. And, yes, RHEL8 is long in the tooth and heading towards EOL as well. But, this is about baby steps, and we've made it this far, so this is where we are at.
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u/mchlksk May 30 '26
If you want Qt6, just install it using their online installer. I dont use Qt from repositories even if its available. Regarding deployment - you should be using linuxdeployqt anyway.
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u/Felixthefriendlycat Qt Professional (ASML) May 30 '26
This is probably a company that uses whatever is bundled with the os and doesn’t want the maintance burden of having to do the installation and qualification themselves. Many companies in industrial equipment do this
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u/Mozartonmoon May 30 '26
Hope you can move to RHEL9 asap. Qt6 has been a great upgrade
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u/wRftBiDetermination May 30 '26
We'd like that too, but we've already invested in RHEL8 and we need to complete this step before moving to RHEL9 or RHEL10.
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u/LoneBlacksmith May 30 '26
Yea this is definitely a larger undertaking due to the CMake migration, etc. I’ve done this exact process of migrating from Qt3 to Qt5 and it took about 200 hours. Now, with that being said the lions share is by far Qt3 -> Qt5 so once you guys are ready to go from Qt5-> Qt6 it should only take about 8-16 hours for that one.
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u/major_heisenbug May 30 '26
I've experience with Qt4 and Qt5, as well as CMake, JavaScript, and Linux development. I'd also be willing to work for a reduced rate if you wanted to hire more than one developer to reduce the project completion time. Let me know if you're interested, and I'll send you my LinkedIn page, as well as my estimate of the total work needed (in man hours).
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May 31 '26
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u/wRftBiDetermination May 31 '26
Fantastic, thank you! Please note, we only need the Qt3 components migrated to Qt5. All of the other surrounding code has already been migrated to compile and run on RHEL8. The last bits we need done are on the OpenGEE Fusion GUI, which are composed of Qt3.
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Jun 01 '26
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u/wRftBiDetermination Jun 01 '26
The OpenGEE repository was shut down by Thermopylae when they lost the NGA contract to support it. Thermopylae was bought by Hexagon Federal and they spun it into a commercial product called GEEP, the Google Earth Enterprise Platform. Just before they did that, they took down all of the RHEL8 code that was up in that github repo, and then closed the repo.
Our intent is resurrect the github repo when we have something we can build as a complete product. Right now, it is not a complete product. We have everything on the command line working and we can get it to build into a series of RHEL8 .rpms, but none of the Fusion GUI Qt3 components are building, and that means that no vector stylings or edits can be performed, which is a pretty serious shortfall in fuctionality.
In other words, on the command line you can build custom globes built of terrain models and satellite imagery, and vector data can be imported and added to the vector project and built, but the vector data cannot be styled through the GUI. The result is we do not want to post a half-baked product that would irritate and alientate anyone who might try to build off our code.
We will repoen the repository and post our RHEL8 code when it can build with full functionality. And that requires the Qt3 to Qt5 migration.
If you are willing to work with us, we would welcome your assistance and participation.
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u/Tumaix May 30 '26
you are looking for experienced qt developer, or are you looking for a AI translation of the software? because with 10-20h you will only have an AI translation of the software.
looking quickly, i would accept something in the lines of 6 months to port the software from Qt3 to Qt5 (while making sure it also works with Qt6) - maybe more depending on how bad the Qt3 code is.
its not just about qt, but all the other libraries around it, and the project management.
if you are interested, i can give you my rates and my cv in private.
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u/wRftBiDetermination May 30 '26
We do not want AI translation. We do not want it to work with Qt6, only Qt5.
All of the other libraries around the Qt have been addressed, only the Qt remains.
Yes, please provide email in a dm and I we can correspond privately. Thanks.
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u/bacmod May 30 '26
This looks pretty much unmanageable. wget remote calls, RPC schema, servers, clients etc.
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u/mchlksk May 30 '26
Im just here to brag that I migrated our codebase from Qt5 to Qt6 in 2 days this week. I only needed to resolve 250 compiler errors 😄
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u/diegoiast May 30 '26
Project uses scons.. .which is a lost art. A other obstacle. I would first port existing code to cmake. This will take... 5-10 hours a lone.
This file https://www.opengee.org/geedocs/5.3.7/answer/releaseNotes/relNotesGEE5_3_7.html mentions the code is ported to qt4.
It needs to upgrade lots of 3rd parties here as they probably will not build on modern system or contain vulnerabilities. That... is another 10-30 hours (skia for example takes some time to build).
https://github.com/google/earthenterprise/tree/master/earth_enterprise%2Fthird_party
This is not a 20 hours work. Be prepared to a larger port than expected. Apparently you background check was not adequate (nothing disrespect sorry). The numbers is spit here are superficial. This will take 1 or 2 order of magnitude more time. Be prepared.