[Development] Convenience Imports in QML

[Charley Bay]

Alan spaketh:
I've heard complaints about all the varying version numbers used in

> QML imports. I don't think we can just standardize, for example on
> 5.0, because the whole point of modularization is that modules don't
> have to move in lockstep anymore. But I did hear an idea at Dev Days
> to help confuddled users (thanks Jens!). Theoretically we could have
> some helpful convenience imports the same way there are conveience
> includes in C++ (like #include<QtCore>). So what do people think of
> having convenience imports? These would be imports which contain zero
> types, but act like a bunch of other imports. For example, there could
> be a convenience import like
>
> import Qt 5.0
>
> Which imports all QML modules in the Qt Essentials released with 5.0.0
> (except QtQuick 1). It would be the equivalent of
>
> import QtQml 2.0
> import QtQuick 2.0
> import QtQuick.Window 2.0
> import QtQuick.Particles 2.0
> import QtAudioEngine 1.0
> import QtMultimedia 5.0
> import QtWebkit 3.0
>
<snip>,

This is tricky.  I think all "solutions" would be imperfect, but I like the
"convenience" import-functions.

I like the idea of the "convenience-import", because my code would
"just-work" with a "known-cocktail" that is established to work together:

  //FILE: MyItem.qml
  import Qt 5.0
  Item {
    // ...my stuff always works, this file is rarely touched
  }

I understand others' concerns about "load-performance".  However, people
don't *have* to use the convenience imports.  The issue is that much code
merely wants to use the "latest-working-cocktail" of code, or the
latest-version of a component, because they don't access the properties
directly (the local file will never break), or their access is minimal (and
it's too much work to keep touching files merely to update the import
version number).

Another option might be a "special-version-number" like "latest" that
resolves to the "latest-version":

  //FILE: MyItem.qml
  import QtQuick.Window latest
  Item {
    // ...my stuff always works, this file is rarely touched
    Window {
       id: window_a
    }
    Window {
       id: window_b
    }
  }

--charley
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