[Development] syncqt.pl in C++

[Konrad Rosenbaum]

Hi,


On Wed, March 8, 2017 21:23, Jake Petroules wrote:
> Personally, I also prefer a build process never touch the network, but the
> average developer isn't that picky and just wants to Get Things Done.

The average test engineer is that picky and even worse! A test engineer
expects to save a minimal VM of the build system, boot it up a year later
in a completely isolated environment (i.e. no network or access to
external repositories) and then it should build the exact same binaries
bit for bit (minus the file create time).

Also: I've worked in environments in which a network connection for build
scripts would have been quite difficult to accomplish if not impossible
(e.g. isolated servers with no access to the web proxy or proxies with
rather strange setups). Every little dependency had to be downloaded
manually (sometimes from a completely different network) and transferred
into the build environment over several stages - that's especially funny
if you're building from source because the pre-built binaries don't run
because they require a newer system. No, those environments are
exceedingly common in industry.

If you want to keep the Qt build process as flexible as possible:

1) minimal dependencies (i.e. compiler, maybe one or two simple tools)
2) no network access
3) can be built completely from sources, no binaries in the archive
4) no self-dependency (i.e. does not require binaries of itself to build)

otherwise: expect complaints from people living what is jokingly called
"real life". ;-)

Do NOT expect modern connected systems at the user's side!



     Konrad