GSoC/2025/StatusReports/holychicken

Porting ISO Image Writer GUI to Kirigami and adding some glitter

The current version of ISO Image writer is written in C++ with QT Widgets. Although it does the job of flashing an ISO onto a usb disk theres much room from improvment.

The current version offers:

A straightforward interface for selecting ISO files and target USB devices
Verification of ISO checksums and digital signatures
Safety measures to prevent accidental overwrites of system drives
Support for multiple platforms (Linux, Windows, macOS) through various package formats

Despite its functionality, the current implementation has several limitations:

Requires manual downloading of ISO images before use
Interface is not consistent with modern KDE applications as they move towards using Kirigami, the GUI framework built on top of QML
Inconsistencies in the Ul usage

Mentors

Harald Sitter, Nicholas Fella, Tobias Fella

Work report

Week 1:

Initial Blog
Reviewed Kirigami components and brainstormed different layouts ideas
Reviewed Codebase and started with porting frontend to QML

Week 2:

Updated Build system to embed QML into executables
Reviewed quickemu/quickget
Completed first iteration of the UI with placeholder texts and stubs

Week 3 + 4:

Refined the UI and added more features like drag-and-drop support, ISO searching.
Opened up the initial Merge Request and received feedback
Iterating and addressing the feedback
- As part of the feedback I had to rethink the UI following KDE's design language

Week 5:

Addressing more feedback
started integrating the backend logic to qml
Completed integration of iso-verification
- Continuing with usb-device listing and flashing

Week 6:

Addressing more feedback
Reworking control flow for iso-verification
Streamlining UI with KDE's design philosophy

Week 7 - Now:

Added automatic iso discovery
Improving look and feel of the app
Switching out qml file dialog with `QFileDialog`

Final Notes

Ported entire application from Qt Widgets to QML
Implemented automatic ISO fetching system - dynamic fetching from Fedora, Kubuntu, and KDE Neon endpoints
- Built web scraping and JSON parsing functionality - Created releasefetch.cpp class to automatically get latest release information including checksums
Added direct URL download capability - Users can now paste ISO URLs directly into the app for download and flashing
Integrated native file dialog - Bridged QFileDialog from C++ to QML for better desktop theme consistency
Made flashing process non-blocking - Updated flashcontroller to show real-time progress during USB flashing
Implemented drag-and-drop functionality - Users can drop ISO files directly onto the application window