[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
> KDAB - The Qt Experts_______________________________________________
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-- 
Eike Ziller, Principle Software Engineer - The Qt Company GmbH
 
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