[Development] Future of QBS

[Kevin Kofler]

Tobias Hunger wrote:
> I am still missing a comparison of qbs and *current* build system options.
> All I see is qbs vs. qmake and qbs vs. cmake 2.x. Neither qmake nor cmake
> is what qbs will be competing with by the time it is ready to be used in
> earnest.
> 
> So far we excluded most possible build systems on the grounds that they do
> not support the mixed host/target builds we do. That requirement is going
> away. So we have more options now. Just to name two: Bazel promises great
> scalability and reliability, meson claims to be simple and fast. Even
> CMake made a lot of progress since version 2.x.

This is the first time I hear of Bazel, so it cannot be that popular. The 
fact that it is written in Java also makes it a poor fit for Qt, as it would 
make Qt depend on the huge Java stack to build.

Meson is, as far as I can tell (I had already looked at it a couple times), 
mostly a CMake clone written in Python. I fail to see how it is conceptually 
any different from (let alone better than) CMake. It is mainly pushed by 
GNOME developers who are fed up of stone-age autotools, but apparently do 
not want to use the same thing KDE uses (CMake) just because KDE uses it.

        Kevin Kofler