[Development] Notes on QtCore session @ QCS2016

[Kevin Kofler]

Thiago Macieira wrote:
> It was a *choice* not to depend on the C++ Standard Library ABI  for
> features outside of the language support. The choice was made during Qt
> 5.0 development, in response to the -no-stl option being removed. It was
> originally done so that applications and libraries on Apple platforms
> could choose to use libstdc++ or libc++: it was common back in 2012 that
> applications would need to link to proprietary libraries that used
> libstdc++ and could not easily be recompiled. That choice extended to GCC
> 4.9 & 5.0 that broke compatibility, and it turned out to be a bonus for us
> because Qt-only applications did not need to be recompiled.

I think it was a mistake to remove -no-stl to begin with, and that Qt API 
should not be littered with ugly std:: APIs, not just for ABI reasons, but 
also for API (consistency) reasons.

Why can't Qt continue to offer better Q* equivalents as it has always done? 
What benefit does it bring to users to deprecate nice APIs for less nice 
ones just because the latter are part of the compiler?

        Kevin Kofler