[Development] forcing libxkbcommon to be present in the system makes newer Qt unusable on older linux distros

[NIkolai Marchenko]

Okay, I may have been misled by the documentation of the current build on
github. They expcilitly use meson for it.

On Tue, Mar 5, 2019 at 5:52 PM Gatis Paeglis <Gatis.Paeglis at qt.io> wrote:

> > library doesn't provide another way to build itself.
>
> libxkbcommon changelog for 0.7.2
> https://lists.freedesktop.org/archives/wayland-devel/2017-August/034721.html
>
> "Added a Meson build system as an alternative to existing autotools build
> system. The intent is to remove the autotools build in one of the next
> releases. Please try to convert to it and report any problems."
>
> libxkbcommon changelog for 0.8.3 https://lists.freedesktop.org/archives/wayland-devel/2019-February/039970.html:
>
> "Build note: We've had a report that the autotools build doesn't work with
>
> the new version of Bison, 3.3. If this happens to you, please switch to
> using meson. The autotools build will be removed in libxkbcommon 0.9.0."
>
> Note that 0.9.0 does not exist, so even the current master branch still
> can be built with auto tools.
>
>
> > Unless I misunderstand something this change hits older linuxes real
> hard.
>
> Current minimal required version by Qt is 0.5.0 and only really old
> distros do not have it. And to quote the commit message that removed the
> library from bundled sources:
>
> "This library is present on all supported platforms."
>
>
>
> ------------------------------
> *From:* Development <development-bounces at qt-project.org> on behalf of
> NIkolai Marchenko <enmarantispam at gmail.com>
> *Sent:* Tuesday, March 5, 2019 3:36 PM
> *To:* Qt development mailing list
> *Subject:* [Development] forcing libxkbcommon to be present in the system
> makes newer Qt unusable on older linux distros
>
>
>  - [QTBUG-65503] Removed xkbcommon from bundled sources. This library is
>    present on all supported platforms. The minimal required version now is
>    0.5.0.
>
>
> The change above makes updating Qt a gargantuan task for Centos 6 at least.
>
> Building xkbcommon there requires meson (which centos 6 doesn't have)
>
> and python 3.5 (same). And the library doesn't provide another way to build itself.
>
>
> Unless I misunderstand something this change hits older linuxes real hard.
>
> Is it really necessary?
>
>
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