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

Alex Malyushytskyy alexmalvtk at gmail.com
Thu Apr 11 01:54:51 CEST 2013


>>  * we expect that most people who build Qt from sources are Qt developers
    themselves (majority of users will download binaries and the stats prove
    it);

Thiago,

I afraid your expectations are wrong.

My statement is totally based on my experience.
Most of my Qt life I was a Qt commercial customer ( 8 of 10 years) and we
always had to build
Qt binaries for Windows.  (That was also a reason we stopped paying for
commercial support.)

Most of the time Qt binaries were not available for all Microsoft compiler
versions we were using.
And I can still point to the discussion where you claimed that you will not
build 64 bit binaries cause 64 Windows market "does not exist"  even though
we had such on our office computers for about 2 years and my son had it on
his laptop.

Current situation is not much better.
Just look at Qt5 page these days. The only 64 bit version of binaries is
available for download is
Qt 5.0.2 for Windows 64-bit (VS 2012, 500
MB)<http://download.qt-project.org/official_releases/qt/5.0/5.0.2/qt-windows-opensource-5.0.2-msvc2012_64-x64-offline.exe>

There is no binaries generated for the only 64 bit supported Windows
platform (VS 2010 according http://qt-project.org/wiki/Qt_5.0)
and 64 bit Windows is not even in the list of targeted platforms.

Lifespan of our software can't be the same as lifespan of Qt.
We still have have some products built with VS 2005, even though active
development is done on VS 2010.
Upgrading costs money and often does not provide any additional value to
end customers.
Often we simply can't upgrade cause other 3rd party products are not
upgraded yet ( for example Fortran ).

Above means multiple versions of Qt have to be built from the source.
For example currently I have 8 versions of Qt 4.7.3 ( the last version we
upgraded to) on my Windows desktop.
it might be uncommon since often a team of developers work on a single
product, but even in this case these days you will need both 32 and 64 bit
versions per compiler used.

Do not take me wrong. I think you do a perfect job on Qt development.
I believe that Perl was brought in with consideration and can accept this.
But I do not want you to have false expectations.
Simplicity may make a difference between life and death.
This is a reason we do not live in the Linux world yet.
This may make a  difference for the Qt future on Windows.

Also I disagree with you about Windows not being a good development
platform.
I have not done any programming on MAC, but I've spend as much development
time as I can on Windows having access to Linux on desktop and clusters,
cause I find it much more developer friendly (in this case user friendly).
VS provides 99% of the tools I ever needed for development and have the
most convenient debugging features.
Convenience of being able to build multiple configuration from a single
source is a reason I still maintain VS projects together with qmake
projects and use last only on Linux.
Whatever is missing can be added for additional cost installing 3rd party
software.
You can get something similar on Linux, but at least product which provides
comparable features we are using there cost more than VS subscription and
definitely is more expensive than memory management solutions which can be
integrated in VS.
I might be not a typical developer, but I've spent a sufficient time
working on both Windows and Linux.
And I prefer VS for development.


Best regards,
   Alex











On Wed, Apr 10, 2013 at 12:02 PM, Thiago Macieira <thiago.macieira at intel.com
> wrote:

> On quarta-feira, 10 de abril de 2013 11.55.24, Bob Hood wrote:
> > No doubt you meant what you said.  However, it hardly changes the fact
> that
> > the one omitted is rather ubiquitous, regardless of your personal
> feelings
> > about it.  I have no love for Microsoft (especially after Windows 8),
> and I
> > hate Apple and their ecosystem snobbery with a passion.  However, as a
> > commercial developer, I understand the need to support them as part of
> basic
> > business practices.  While I may curse them like a sailor privately, I
> > never allow my prejudices to reach my customers through my product.
>
> Actually, it's pure statistics.
>
> Operating systems where Qt current is known to run:
>
>         Windows
>         Mac OS X
>         Linux
>         *BSD
>         Solaris
>         QNX
>
> The majority of those have Perl.
>
> And really, I installed ActivePerl on my IT-locked-down-and-virus-scanning
> laptop easily. I *really* do not understand what the big deal is -- was my
> experience atypical?
>
> If you want to build a hugely complex framework like Qt, with a million
> lines
> of code, please understand you'll need to get a beefy machine and install
> some
> dependencies. If you don't want to build, try using one of the pre-built
> binaries.
>
> Let me give you another important point:
>
> we're trying to make the source releases to be as close as the
> repositories on
> which we (Qt developers) develop Qt. Why? Here are a few reasons:
>
>  * we expect that most people who build Qt from sources are Qt developers
>     themselves (majority of users will download binaries and the stats
> prove
>     it);
>
>  * we want to reduce the need of testing of the source releases by
>    "leveraging" the testing that is done daily by developers (that is, if
> the
>    source releases are substantially different from the repositories, the
> fact
>    that dozens of people compile Qt daily proves nothing);
>
>  * we want the source packages to have cryptographic verifiability that
> they
>     weren't tampered with, by having the sources match *exactly* the
>     repository, which is already cryptographically verifiable.
>
> I understand this makes some people's lives a bit (or a lot) harder. I
> understand Christian's concern of managing a farm of computers (by the way,
> don't you have a centralised software deployment solution?)
>
> I'm just hoping that you guys understand that the changes are done for good
> reasons, they aren't done without forethought. And that Perl has been an
> industry standard for 3 decades.
> --
> Thiago Macieira - thiago.macieira (AT) intel.com
>   Software Architect - Intel Open Source Technology Center
>
> _______________________________________________
> Interest mailing list
> Interest at qt-project.org
> http://lists.qt-project.org/mailman/listinfo/interest
>
>
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