[Interest] Oops! Somebody's got a bad case of dependency bloat!

[Michael Jackson]

On Apr 10, 2013, at 9:22 AM, Koehne Kai wrote:

>> -----Original Message-----
>> From: interest-bounces+kai.koehne=digia.com at qt-project.org
>> [mailto:interest-bounces+kai.koehne=digia.com at qt-project.org] On Behalf
>> Of Christian Dähn
>> Sent: Wednesday, April 10, 2013 3:08 PM
>> To: interest
>> Subject: Re: [Interest] Oops! Somebody's got a bad case of dependency
>> bloat!
>> 
>> 
>>>> So I wait till I have enough free time to fix the messy dependency
>>>> problems and the many porting issues (like deprecated
>>>> QString::toAscii() for example) für my few million codelines...
>>>> maybe I've to spent more than just one lunch time for it :-D
>>> 
>>> QT_DISABLE_DEPRECATED_BEFORE=0
>> 
>> No problem - I know and tested that already. I just have > 100 _spreaded_
>> .pro files
>> (means: there's no single root dir or root .pro file) - so this can't be done just
>> adding one line ;-)
> 
> While not the cleanest solution, you might also add it to your mkspec of choice (e.g. mkspecs\X\qmake.conf).
> 
> Regards
> 
> Kai

I have not tried Qt 5 (I was just about ready to try it) but having to manually hunt down a Perl installation when I am not familiar with Perl, let alone the specifics of Perl on each platform seems to be a "User Experience" failure. Why doesn't the Qt Devs just simply post what version of Perl *they* are using in some OBVIOUS place, like the README so the rest of us don't have to spend hours and hours pulling our hair out trying to get Qt to compile. Something like:

The QtDevs recommend Perl Version XX on Windows XX. Download it at http://.....


I also remember a big stink about this when Qt 4.8? came out and it turns out that if you just downloaded the posted source archive you didn't need perl at all.

From my own situation, here is why I'll probably NEVER be able to move to Qt 5. My collaborator works on a DoD machine. He is lucky to just be able to have Visual Studio installed. Perl is NOT on the list of approved software and he has NO access to his "C" drive. He can not use the prebuilt Qt binaries because we require 64 bit apps to be built and we all know that mixing someone else's Visual Studio builds with your own libraries is just a recipe for disaster. We have several external libraries that we also build so that we have ultimate control over how *ALL* of our dependencies are built. So I guess I'll limp along with Qt 4.8.4 until something just utterly breaks in it in the future then decide what to do at that point.

I'd really like to know who thought that needing perl for the build was a good idea when not all the platforms have it as a base installed software package.

Cheers
Mike Jackson