[Development] Future of QBS

Christian Gagneraud chgans at gmail.com
Sun Oct 15 14:46:35 CEST 2017


On 15 October 2017 at 23:23, Jake Petroules <Jake.Petroules at qt.io> wrote:
>
>
>> On Oct 15, 2017, at 11:20 AM, Christian Gagneraud <chgans at gmail.com> wrote:
>>
>> On 14 October 2017 at 04:22, Jean-Michaël Celerier
>> <jeanmichael.celerier at gmail.com> wrote:
>>>> nobody is going to port Qt to CMake (if you disagree start a new thread)
>>>
>>> https://plus.google.com/+AaronSeigo/posts/fWAM9cJggc8
>>
>> I would resume this post as "I love CMake, CMake is the only way.
>> You're all wrong."
>> This post doesn't explain anything, doesn't gives any analysis, no
>> comparison, no argument whatsoever, nothing.
>>
>> How many people had the same reaction when clang started?
>> Nowadays, clang is actually far superior to gcc, it brought tooling
>> like we would never have dared to dream of .
>>
>> Same goes with SVN vs git, now (almost) everyone have given up with SVN.
>> SVN was "CVS in better", git is a completely different approach to
>> SCM, SVN is now a zombie.
>>
>> "Not reinventing the wheel" has to be balanced with "innovation".
>>
>> IMHO, Qbs' great potential is the "completely new approach".
>> Qbs would be a failed attempt if it was "CMake&autohell in better".
>>
>> I think it's worth thinking about that, and be critical instead of
>> being blind nay-sayer.
>>
>>>> a complete CMake build for Qt was already contributed upstream (quite some
>>>> time ago) .. and rejected ..
>>
>> It would be interesting to know why. Oswald said "we (...) are
>> strongly biased against a
>> cmake-based solution", but didn't give any reason/justification (Or I
>> missed it).
>>
>> Did this CMake port cover all the features provided by qmake?
>> Did this CMake port provide all the configuration needed by Qt, on all
>> the supported platform?
>> Could the Qt CI switch to CMake then?
>>
>> And what about this "Nominating Kevin Funk for Maintainer qtbase/Build
>> Systems/CMake" thread?
>> Will Kevin Funk (aka. "The CMake guy" according to Sergio) be fair
>> when it comes to evaluating  new build systems for Qt? or is it an
>> hijack attempt, an insider infiltration?
>> Or is it pure timing coincidence, and Kevin Funk is actually a "build
>> system*s* guy"?
>
> As I said in my QtWS talk, we recognize that people must be given a choice of
> build system for their own projects, and for that reason we will continue to
>  support and provide CMake modules for Qt libraries.
>
> Since Kevin's been doing the work of maintaining these modules anyways, it
> makes sense that he officially be labeled Maintainer. Ossi is still chief
> maintainer of build systems generally, Kevin is simply being nominated as a
> sub-maintainer for the CMake build systems area just as I am a sub-maintainer
> of the Apple Platforms (macOS/iOS) build systems area. This has nothing to
> do with Qbs or Qt's use of it.
>
> André actually asked me if I was OK with him nominating Kevin, given my role
>  in driving Qbs, which of course I am for the above stated reasons. :)

Cool, glad to hear everything went smoothly. I didn't realise the
issue about internal build system in use vs exported build system
support.

+1 for Kevin! ;)

>> I have no power of decision, so i will accept any.
>>
>> Nonetheless, I think it would be a mistake to choose a build system
>> over the other because "I love Xyz, Xyz is the only way. You're all
>> wrong."
>>
>> Who knows, maybe the answer to "Which new build system for Qt" could
>> be neither CMake, neither Qbs.
>
> We've already decided internally that we want to push Qbs as the new build tool, and I have no doubt that the community will agree.

I hope you all the best, please get rid of qmake.

qmake is a real pain, and it gets even worth when cross-compiling.
It's leaking everywhere, even QtCreator suffers from that.

Chris



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