[Development] Build system for Qt 6

[Thiago Macieira]

On Monday, 29 October 2018 18:20:35 PDT NIkolai Marchenko wrote:
> Lars, I have to wonder, don't you guys miss an opportunity here?
> Qt 5 was not developed with QBS in mind.  As such it probably took more
> effort than needed to fit QBS to something that was originally QMake based.
> 
> At the same time you will have to fit CMake to suit the needs for Qt6.  (or
> vice versa)
> 
> Would it really be so much extra investment to have a build system fully
> integrated into Qt framework process that you can just make fit on the fly,
> over fiddling around the system that is overgeneralized and perhaps doesn't
> support everything as much as you'd want?

I'm not Lars.

But yes.

The Qt 6 organisation won't be too different from Qt 5's, aside from the 
changes that Lars and Tobias have already mentioned and that make a lot of 
sense to me. So I don't see how any kind of organisation will make it easier.

More importantly, the problem is keeping that specific buildsystem working. If 
the work isn't shared and others don't pitch in, the price to pay to keep a 
Qt-only buildsystem working is too high: that's what Lars' email says.

Finally, I'm sure any reasonable request we may have on something CMake 
doesn't support yet, upstream will be willing to hear us and implement where 
necessary. I quite frankly don't expect there to be much, especially since 
Lars' email says that they made so much progress in so little time.

> You've said it yourself that qbs did give good results. Maybe give it a
> chance?

It's been given a chance. The wip/qbs branch has existed for years in qtbase. 
The tool has existed for years.

Can you name any project of moderate complexity using it?

-- 
Thiago Macieira - thiago.macieira (AT) intel.com
  Software Architect - Intel Open Source Technology Center