[Development] Online installer no longer lets users choose between Qt 5.3.0 and Qt 5.3.1

[Henry Skoglund]

Hi, I think treating Qt 5.3.1 as a patch level upgrade to 5.3 is a good 
idea, but currently in execution it’s a bit lacking, i.e. when I do 
fresh installs of 5.3.1:

Windows 1st line from qtdiag: “Win: Qt 5.3.1 (Jun 19 2014, MSVC 2013, 32 
bit, release build) on “windows” little endian/“
Windows Qt Creator 3.1.2 Auto-Detected Kit: “Desktop Qt 5.3 MSVC2013 32bit”

Mac 1st line from qtdiag: “Mac: Qt 5.3.1 (Jun 19 2014, Clang 5.0 
(clang-500.2.79) (Apple), 64 bit, release build) on “cocoa” little endian/
Mac Qt Creator 3.1.2 Auto-Detected Kit: “Desktop Qt 5.3.0 clang 64bit”

Also, using Windows 5.3.1 online installer, default directory for 
Qt5Core.dll is “C:\Qt\5.3\msvc2013\bin”, offline installer defaults to 
“C:\Qt\Qt5.3.1\5.3\msvc2013\bin”.

It’s easy to get schizophrenia. Personally I trust qtdiag the most. But 
having different part of Qt’s infrastructure disagree on such an 
*important* number as the current version of Qt, is going down a 
treacherous road.

So far Qt has been using the “dog-eat-dog” distribution algorithm, i.e. 
a new release wipes the existing one. Compare for example with the 
“mindmeld” in-place upgrade of Net 4.5.x on an existing Net 4.0 
installation. This has been a source of much confusion. But with the 
generous release cycle of Qt, I agree that the # of packages in the 
repository can be overwhelming.

So a suggestion: Qt patch level releases = good, but I think we need to 
think of them not as a completely new “dog” or installation, but as an 
*upgrade* to the existing installation (like if you buy a new collar for 
your dog). Something you download which cannot by itself install Qt, 
instead requiring an existing Qt installation which it can patch.

And these upgrades, to keep them mentally and logistically different, 
shouldn’t be called 5.3.1 or 5.4.1 etc. We need some other name, one way 
is to mimic what Microsoft does with Visual Studio, like with VS2012, 
when I install it from scratch, it says “.. 2012 RTM” in the about box. 
Then if I download and apply Update 4 to it, the about box says “.. 2012 
Update 4”. So releases and updates are two different beasts altogether.

Rgrds Henry