[Development] QMetaType and non-const references

[Ulf Hermann]

> I don't see how QVariant could support a non-copyable type any time in the
> future, since QVariant itself is copyable. What is it going to do if it were
> holding a non-copyable type and you copied it?

Yes, it would be ugly. It would have to move internally and warn about 
it. But let's forget about QVariant and concentrate on the metatype side 
of things.

> But how would you use it? Right now, you can't make a signal-slot connection
> to an rvalue reference, in either the old or new syntax. It simply doesn't
> make sense, since signal-slot connections are meant to be N:M things: moving
> from an input in one slot, thus making the content unavailable to the next
> slot, is a weird situation.

We don't only use signals and slots in QML. We can also invoke methods 
directly using QMetaObject::invokeMethod() and friends. And we call 
property write accessors. Being able to encode references and rvalue 
references in QMetaType could be useful for such a case. It doesn't have 
to be exposed in public API yet, but it should be possible to add it later.

best regads,
Ulf