[Development] Updating x86 SIMD support in Qt

[Rui Oliveira]

Hey,

Since Qt has its own Conan/Artifactory setup 
<https://www.qt.io/blog/installing-qt-via-conan-package-manager>, maybe 
it would be viable to have some different SIMD setups available as 
options for the Qt package?

This would require Conan as a dependency, of course. On most systems 
that means Python (Conan 1.x supports py2 still, the upcoming Conan 2.0 
with all its breaking changes will require py3, iirc), but on Windows 
they have .exe versions available <https://conan.io/downloads.html>.

I think this would have little impact in the overall build process. 
`conan install qt <options>` and just point your project to look for Qt 
in ~/.conan... With Qt Creator should be just creating a new kit. If the 
Windows installer for Qt helped with this, even better.


Rui

Às 13:30 de 24/01/2022, Konrad Rosenbaum escreveu:
> Hi,
>
> On 23/01/2022 19:39, Thiago Macieira wrote:
>> I expect that most of those tools are therefore simply using whatever 
>> binaries
>> they obtained from The Qt Company and didn't rebuild from source. I 
>> think this
>> is how we at Intel do for the installers for the oneAPI SDK on Linux 
>> and macOS
>> (the Windows installer got rewritten a few years ago).
>
> Correct. Only a handful of application developers know how to compile 
> the entire framework and (esp. on Windows) a lot of them would not 
> even have the idea to do it. Some of my Windows-based colleagues would 
> panic if I told them to compile their frameworks. I have had paid 
> customer projects to help them compile Qt for some OS version where 
> binaries were not readily available.
>
> Then there are bastards like me who know perfectly well how to compile 
> Qt, who compile all kinds of large programs all the time, but refuse 
> to do so with Qt because I am too lazy to tune my build process, I 
> think it takes too long and I like the excuse of using "the standard 
> configuration"... ;-)
>
>> So if my proposal had been in effect for those releases, it's quite 
>> likely the
>> tools wouldn't have run on your 13+-year-old computer.
>>
>> But it isn't. We're talking about the next release, 6.4. There won't 
>> be any
>> tools built with it until the second half of this year, and commercial
>> customers may even want to wait for the LTS release after that.
>
> And what makes you think that we stingy, cheap and lazy bastards will 
> buy a new computer to replace this outdated piece of scrap metal this 
> year when we haven't done so in more than 10 years? ;-)
>
> The cruel fact is that around 2010 computers got so darn efficient 
> that you can run a moderately good machine from slightly before 2010 
> with minor upgrades to this day and call it "the kid's computer" or 
> even your "main workstation" without blushing. I know plenty of people 
> (both laymen and CS professionals) who run such old hardware (or 
> worse) and don't even notice that it is old - if I hadn't looked it up 
> I would have sworn my workstation is less than 6 years old.
>
> [Yes, as someone who's income depends on people buying the newest 
> chips the irony of not replacing my own computer in >10 years is not 
> entirely lost on me...]
>
> Speaking of LTS: with LTS not available to Open Source users anymore - 
> sticking with older versions of Qt is not exactly a good option 
> either. Unless I restrict myself to Qt 5.15 until I'm satisfied all my 
> downstream users are likely to have bought a new computer (if they are 
> as stingy as I am, then Qt7 will be close to being released before 
> that happens).
>
>
>> On Linux, we can have the multiple versions. I proposed a minimum of 
>> v2 and an
>> option of v3, but we can always choose v1+v2+v3. But I really want v2 
>> and v3
>> for the critical libraries.
>
> Please please chose v1 as pre-built minimum. There are plenty of v1 
> systems out there that need to run Qt applications and plenty of 
> developers who will never re-compile Qt.
>
> If the physical appearance of the "please" makes a difference: Pretty 
> Please!
>
> I have absolutely no problem with stuff running faster and more 
> efficient on my two laptops (which are significantly more modern), but 
> I would have a major problem with it not running at all on my 
> workstation that I use for 95% of all my Open Source work. And I would 
> also not like my applications to crash on my downstream user's 
> computers (which are on average just as old as mine) - every crash 
> means hours of work for someone (usually me) to find out what the 
> problem was.
>
>
>
>     Konrad
>
>
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