[Development] QML Tooling Renames (was: Pending decisions on co-installation)

[Alan Alpert]

On Thu, Nov 1, 2012 at 1:47 AM, Knoll Lars <Lars.Knoll at digia.com> wrote:
> Hi,
>
> after reading through the whole thread, here's my comments on the different parts:
>
> On Oct 30, 2012, at 9:47 PM, Thiago Macieira <thiago.macieira at intel.com> wrote:
>> 2) QML tool names
>> Kai raised the point that many of the QML 2 tools work for QML 1 too and maybe
>> even for Qt 4's QML 1. We need confirmation on that as well as the willingness
>> to keep them that way for one or two years at least. For the tools that work
>> on both QML engines, we can drop the version number from their names.
>
> I think most things are now settled, the main remaining ones are the qmlviewer/qmlscene names. As Chris said, they do somewhat different things. qmlviewer for QML1 actually adds a 'runtime' object into the QML environment and does some other magic. qmlscene is just instantiating a QQuickView and then executing the qml. So I'd go for qml1viewer and qml2scene, but let's hear if Chris/Martin have any further comments.
>
> Btw, we had a discussion here in Oslo that it would be great to at some point have a real qml runtime available. Probably simply called 'qml' as well. But let's keep that for a separate mail.

I agree that the discussion of the 'qml' tool should be a separate
thread. But the concept makes me like qml1viewer/qml2scene for the
current names because it leaves clear room for the unifying 'qml' tool
later.

So far we seem to agree on the following convention: Tools for QML 1
only start with qml1, tools for QML 2 or greater start with qml2, and
tools for QML 1 or greater start with qml[-0-9]? (no digit after the
qml). Note that qmleasing/easingcurveeditor aren't strictly QML2 or
greater compliant, but they generate a list of numbers for the custom
bezier easing curve, introduced in QtQuick 2.0.

There are two points I'd like to add to the discussion. Firstly
qmlbundle isn't really useful yet, I'd advocate moving it to the
playground or somewhere outside the qtdeclarative module until it's
done. Secondly qmleasing and easingcurveeditor really should be
merged. They both generate custom easing curve strings for QtQuick 2
animations, just from different parameters. I'll start that change
later today, so if that gets in first then there will be no need to
rename easingcurve editor.

There was also a suggestion that symlinks be added for the multiply
compatible tools, i.e. that you'd have qml1min and qml2min as well as
qmlmin so that it's really easy for the developer (just the one rule
based on which version you're using). I like that idea, at least in
the $prefix dir and not /usr/bin, but I think it should be considered
*after* the current renaming as it's an optional extra.

To summarize QML tool naming discussion so far:

In qtquick1 repo
qmlviewer -> qml1viewer
qmlplugindump  -> qml1plugindump

In qtdeclarative repo
qmlscene -> qml2scene
qmlplugindump  -> qml2plugindump
qmlbundle -> move to playground
qmlmin -> qmlmin
qmlprofiler -> qmlprofiler
qmltestrunner -> qml2testrunner
qmleasing -> qml2easing
easingcurveeditor -> qml2easing (merge tools)

Does anyone have any further feedback on QML tool renaming before
these get implemented?

--
Alan Alpert