[Development] templated QObjects [was: Re: We are planning to upgrade qdoc to use clang for parsing C++]
Ziller Eike
Eike.Ziller at theqtcompany.com
Wed Mar 2 11:14:18 CET 2016
> On Feb 29, 2016, at 1:21 PM, Milian Wolff <milian.wolff at kdab.com> wrote:
>
> On Friday, February 26, 2016 3:56:08 PM CET Thiago Macieira wrote:
>> On sexta-feira, 26 de fevereiro de 2016 20:30:28 PST Milian Wolff wrote:
>>>> The main problems of templated QObject are captured more or less in
>>>> this
>>>>
>>>> thread:
>>>> http://lists.qt-project.org/pipermail/development/2013-March/010288.html
>>>>
>>>> Personally I still think it would be a fancy feature, a bit dangerous
>>>> to
>>>>
>>>> implement maybe even dangerous to use, but really cool :-D
>>>
>>> Thanks for the link. How often is the MOC layout changed in an ABI
>>> incompatible way?
>>
>> There's no historical pattern. There was a major break from Qt 3 to 4 and
>> smaller one from 4 to 5. Qt 4 did have updates that didn't break the ABI;
>> the Qt 5.0 update removed the ability to read meta objects created with Qt
>> 4 moc. I don't remember how the 1→2 and 2→3 updates happened (Qt 3 still
>> used register-on-load meta objects).
>>
>> But since the meta object itself has a version number and the only code that
>> ever reads the internal data is inside QtCore, so we could make changes
>> that change the layout. We haven't done that: all changes between major
>> releases have added things without changing the layout.
>>
>> That's the structure layout though. The file itself compares the
>> Q_MOC_OUTPUT_REVISION macro for equality (not ordering).
>
> OK, but changing the layout between major versions is fine as we break ABI
> anyways then, no?
>
>>> I.e. what problems would we get from having to install the
>>> moc files?
>>
>> Lots.
>
> <snip>
>
>> Have I convinced you? I'm only getting warmed up. I'm sure I can find more
>> issues.
>
> Thanks for the exhaustive, and educative list! I think this should be put on
> the Wiki somewhere for future reference.
>
>>> Alternatively: couldn't moc re-create the required data from included
>>> files
>>> when they contain templated objects? That would solve the problem as well,
>>> no?
>>
>> I have no idea what you meant here.
>>
>> Or, well, I do have one, but I don't think that I understood correctly what
>> you're suggesting. I understood that we keep a copy of the header file's
>> source in the target application and run moc at runtime to dynamically
>> create the meta object, on the fly.
>>
>> Since I don't think that's what you're suggesting and since the above has so
>> many problems (starting with the fact that it doesn't resolve the problem),
>> I'm not even going to analyse it.
>>
>> Can you clarify what you meant?
>
> Yes, what I had in mind from my outsiders POV was the following, and I have no
> clue whether it is feasible at all:
>
> We have the following structure:
>
> $path1/lib/foo.h
> template<typename T> Foo : QObject { ...};
>
> moc is not doing anything here as the templated QObject is not fully
> specialized.
>
> $path2/app/bar.h:
> #include <some_templated_qobject.h>
> using Bar = Foo<int>;
That would break if any other code in the application (possibly in a different library linked to it) has e.g.
using Blah = Foo<int>;
right?
That sounds pretty fragile. Especially if an application loads plugins.
Br, Eike
> Now when we compile app, moc runs over the fully specialized templated QObject
> and can instantiate it as needed and put all the required code into the
> moc_bar.cpp file as it would for a "normal" QObject. I.e. there is no need to
> install the templated QObject's moc file. This also is close to how an
> ordinary template is handled by a C++ compiler as far as I know.
>
> Maybe I'm missing something, but this sounds like an elegant solution? The
> only downside is increased complexity in moc to find such instantiations.
> Until clang can be used for moc, we could add a macro, lets say
> Q_INSTANTIATE(Foo<int>), or similar.
>
> What do you say? What am I missing that would break my assumptions?
> --
> Milian Wolff | milian.wolff at kdab.com | Software Engineer
> KDAB (Deutschland) GmbH&Co KG, a KDAB Group company
> Tel: +49-30-521325470
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--
Eike Ziller, Principle Software Engineer - The Qt Company GmbH
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