[Development] Future of QBS

[Jake Petroules]

> On Oct 16, 2017, at 3:34 PM, jeandet <alexis.jeandet at member.fsf.org> wrote:
> 
> I have the feeling that a Qt build system will always force the users
> to choose between another tool they know but where the Qt support might
> not be the best and a Qt focused tool with a good Qt support but they
> will have to deal with external libs and might suffer corner cases.

Indeed, which is why Qbs aims to solve both of those problems. Excellent Qt support and excellent non-Qt support. Choose both.

> As Qt user I started with qmake, I enjoyed writing projects with qmake
> then I switched to CMake to make easier usage of non Qt libs and
> config. Finally I switched to Meson and won't go back to CMake. I'm not
> sure I would switch to Qbs unless it gets less Qt focused.

You should watch my World Summit talk when it's available on YouTube. :)

One of the key points I talked about and which is very important is that Qbs is NOT Qt-focused. Is it meant to be a completely generic build tool which just happens to ship with out-of-the-box Qt support. I've been working on Qbs for 5 years and have made close to 1000 changes, and for all of those 5 years I actually haven't worked on the Qt support very much at all.

> I still miss the point of making a dedicated build system instead of
> contributing to more general build systems like Meson or even CMake.

Qbs is just as general as both of those, and in my opinion, even more so. Please, try it out - you may be surprised!
-- 
Jake Petroules - jake.petroules at qt.io
The Qt Company - Silicon Valley
Qbs build tool evangelist - qbs.io