[Development] Notes on "Qt Build Systems" @ QtCon 2016

[Ch'Gans]

On 5 September 2016 at 23:08, NIkolai Marchenko <enmarantispam at gmail.com> wrote:
> Been using QBS for the last 6 months, transformed all projects to it(from
> qmake). Never looked back.
> It just clicks for me. Most everything seems logical (if poorly explained)
> when you understand how to do it.

I have switched quite a few projects from qmake to Qbs, and me too I
never looked back!
QtCreator has decent support for Qbs (could be improved tho, qmake
support could be improved too and same goes with CMake)
I never wanted to use CMake b/c for me it look like a gross hack
(Reminds me of GNU M4).
Qbs has been designed from the ground up to tackle build management,
and it does it very well in a very elegant and efficient way.
Qbs is a radical change compared to the usual Makefile-generator approach.
Qbs relies on Qt, Qt declarative and Qt JS, which brings a work horse
CMake cannot even dream of.
I would compare CMake and Qbs, the same way Linus Torvald compares SVN and Git:
SVN claims to be CVS but better => Epic fail, Git has been designed to
address devs need using a new and efficient approach.

I've recently contributed to Qbs (with great help from Jake and
Christian), and I've been amazed how easy, simple and straight-forward
the job was.
We're talking 500 lines of raw source code (inc blanks, comments,
autotests, qbs&qmake files, ...) to add a Clang Database generator to
Qbs!
This was that easy because of Qbs architecture but Qt did help a lot
too, generating a JSON Db with Qt was a piece of cake.

I know that lot of project use CMake, but as someone noted, projects
use CMake because they have to, not because they want too.
What are the other cross-platform choices? Autotools, hand-crafted
Makefiles, Scons, Maven, ...
Quite some years ago I was a happy GNU autotools user. Yes I was happy
with it! Why? b/c I didn't have choice back at that time.
Now, each time I have to hack an autotools-based project, I want to
wash my hands 200 times in a raw, yuck!

> One thing QBS needs is better documentation, because a lot of things that
> are "obvious" to Christian Kandeler and Jake Petroules (sorry if misspeled)
> are not ever mentioned in the docs or are in obscure places.
> Using QBS effectively is literally impossible without knowledge of
> freenode:#qt-qbs

Yeah, sort of true. I've learned Qbs by looking at Qbs's own qbs files
and QtCreator's ones too. And of course the documentation, which is
"just" good enough to get started.
It didn't take long to get my projects ported. I now have a
easy-to-read, easy-to-understand, easy-to-extend cross-platform build,
test and packaging (inc. installer) system. Bye bye qmake!

Makefiles are out-dated (no punt intended) and so is CMake and any
other Makefile-based tools.
Makefiles are dead! CMake is ill! (Friendly, easy and provocative argument)

Long live Qbs!

My 2 cents,
Chris

>
> On Mon, Sep 5, 2016 at 1:27 PM, Sune Vuorela <nospam at vuorela.dk> wrote:
>>
>> On 2016-09-05, Andrew Knight <andrew.knight at intopalo.com> wrote:
>> > tl;dr: Lots of discussion on the merits of which build system (CMake,
>> > Qbs) should replace qmake in building Qt; lots of supporters of CMake
>> > but no volunteers to do the work, many reasons to use Qbs as well. Some
>>
>> I do think that there is volunteers to get Qt building with cmake if
>> there is a likly chance of getting it accepted. I think I also
>> commmunicated that at the session.
>>
>> /Sune
>>
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