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

[Thiago Macieira]

On quarta-feira, 10 de abril de 2013 21.18.55, Michael Jackson wrote:
> At some point during the careful discussions of mandating Perl this scenario
> had to have popped up. Those that used to simply download the Qt source,
> decompress and compile will now have a rude awakening when that does not
> work. And at some point somebody decided something along the lines of ".. I
> guess those people will just have to install perl.. ". So at some point a
> conscious decision was made to make current customers unhappier, and
> therefor their lives more difficult. Yes, I am in the majority on this one
> but the Qt devs put me here because of other choices they made.

Yes, lives were made more difficult, but as a trade-off for gains in other areas. 
It's not like someone asked "what can we do to make Windows people more 
unhappy?"

By the way, all of those discussions are public and archived. The "dev" sister 
mailing list of this one is where they happen. So if you ever feel the urge, 
you can review the archives and see how exactly we came to the conclusion. And 
you may join in the discussion too.

> Again. all of this because Qt steadfastly refuses to build a 64 bit version
> for Windows. You give me a 64 bit Qt prebuilt that I can download and
> install and I'll shut up.

http://download.qt-project.org/official_releases/qt/5.0/5.0.2/qt-windows-opensource-5.0.2-msvc2012_64-x64-offline.exe

You even get "64" twice in that package! (it's clearly a mistake that it says 
"64" twice)

> I need the prebuilt for VS 2008, 2010 and 2012 because whether you want to
> believe it or not there are lots of us that still MUST use those versions.

I believe it.

Due to lack of manpower, we cannot provide binaries for all compilers in all 
configurations ((3 VS + MinGW) x (32 and 64 bit) x (ANGLE and OpenGL) = 16 
binaries). We do test each package to see if they were built correctly, they 
install and the applications work. We verify that the sources are the ones 
that they should be.

That takes time, which as I said in other email, is at a premium.

We'll be happy to crowdsource the testing. Package testing is open to all. If 
we have volunteers to test binaries, we can produce more (provided that the 
build farm has the spare capacity). But we will not release a binary unless 
someone tested it first. 

We're doing releases every 4-8 weeks. Packages are generated twice a week and 
the release process usually lasts 2 or 3 weeks. If you want to help, we're 
asking for about 2 hours of per week every 3 weeks out of each 8, not counting 
the download time.

Notices of package builds are sent to the releasing at qt-project.org mailing 
list.

> I think you need to fully understand that comments like "No developer in
> their right mind would use Visual Studio" does not sit well with us. I am a
> developer. I am in my right mind but I didn't have a choice as to what I
> have to use. So if effect berating my for a choice I had no control over
> usually doesn't sit well.

First, please read the other thread where I apologised and confessed my bias. 
>From my point of view, from my personal development philosophy and given what 
tools make me most effective, I would never choose Visual Studio and Windows if 
I had another choice. But I have to understand that there are different people.

(and note the matter of *choice*)

-- 
Thiago Macieira - thiago.macieira (AT) intel.com
  Software Architect - Intel Open Source Technology Center
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