[Development] Qt5 combined source package - Perl dependency

[Anttila Janne]

Hi,

As you probably are aware, there has been a long thread on interest
list about Qt dependency bloat. One of the most commented problems
has been Perl dependency, especially on Windows. 

We have had similar feedback on commercial support channels.

One quite simple change what we could do already for 5.1, is to
run syncqt before creating combined source archives. This would
allow building Qt5 sources (except webkit) without perl, like it 
was on Qt4 as well.

Ossi already prepared a patch making this possible for some time 
ago https://codereview.qt-project.org/49833 but it was rejected
by Thiago and Lars. 

I think it is time to re-evaluate this decision now! 

Qt-Project now provides split source packages, the split packages
do not and should not have syncqt executed. Thus they would make
it possible to cryptographically verify that the sources match 
exactly the repository with no modifications.

The combined source package is provided for convenience. 
I think we should take the next step, and run syncqt before doing
that archive, and provide even more convenience for Qt5 (Windows)
developers.

Comments?

Br,
--
Janne Anttila
Senior Architect - Digia, Qt
Visit us on: http://qt.digia.com