[Development] Qt Assistant (was: RE: Qt 6 co-installability with Qt 5)

[Kai Köhne]

> -----Original Message-----
> From: Kai Pastor, DG0YT <dg0yt at mailbox.org>
> Sent: Thursday, November 19, 2020 8:27 AM
> To: Kai Köhne <Kai.Koehne at qt.io>; development at qt-project.org
> Subject: Re: [Development] Qt 6 co-installability with Qt 5
> 
> Am 19.11.20 um 08:20 schrieb Kai Köhne:
> >> Am 18.11.20 um 15:50 schrieb Kai Köhne:
> >>> FYI, we've been taking assistant out of Qt 6.0.
> >>> https://bugreports.qt.io/browse/QTBUG-86746 . It's not depending on
> >>> any particular Qt version, so my suggestion is to resurrect it (if
> >>> there's enough demand) outside of qt5.git.
> >> Could you please clarify: Can building Qt Asistant be enabled by a
> >> configuration option? Is it still build as part of CI?
> > Currently not. I think it should be completely removed from qttools -
> disabling the build was just the quickest way for the 6.0 release.
> 
> I wouldn't mind if Assistant would actually be moved to a different repository.
> But so far, it is only a suggestion.

Yes, because the priority Is currently to get Qt 6.0 out.

> >> Now with all Qt help links changed to the online version, how is Qt
> >> Assistant/QTextBrowser limiting Qt's documentation at all, justifying
> >> its removal from the build (so late in the Qt 6 release process)?
> > The reason why we removed Qt Assistant in the beta phase is that I don't
> think it should be part of Qt 6.
> 
> Do you want to remove it from "Qt 6", from "Qt 6.0", or from "Qt 6.0.0"?

For Qt 6. I just don't see a good reason that Qt Assistant should be shipped and built as part of the Qt libraries.
 
> There has been no deprecation of this Qt feature AFAIK.

Alright, I see now that we should probably have discussed this on this mailing list beforehand, my fault. 

Still, I think that removing of Qt Assistant in Qt 6.0 is only a 'blocker' for the developers that ship Qt Assistant binaries as a help viewer for their own content. If you are one of them, please speak up at https://bugreports.qt.io/browse/QTBUG-88406 , so we can prioritize accordingly.

For users that use Qt Assistant to browse Qt documentation, it's a mere inconvenience, with multiple alternatives available. 

Regards

Kai


PS: I'll probably start a separate discussion about Qt Linguist soon (but only after Qt 6.0 is out). The same reasoning applies there, just that Qt Linguist shares code with lupdate and the other command line tools, so it wasn't that easy to remove for now.