[Qbs] QBS usage

[Christian Kandeler]

On Tue, 19 Jun 2018 14:15:44 +1200
Christian Gagneraud <chgans at gmail.com> wrote:

> On 18 June 2018 at 20:58, Christian Kandeler <christian.kandeler at qt.io> wrote:
> > On Mon, 18 Jun 2018 11:01:10 +1200
> > Christian Gagneraud <chgans at gmail.com> wrote:
> >  
> >> Last thing, Qbs has built-in support for different compilers/linkers,
> >> this is nice b/c I can just express my toolchian flags in a toolchain
> >> agnostic way, but...
> >> - Qbs will have to continuously catch up with the fast moving toolchain world
> >> - Users depend on Qbs core team to gain support for exotic compilers  
> >
> > How so? You can just provide your own cpp backend, if you wish. Or provide a patch to extend an existing one.  
> 
> Sorry wrote the email in a rush, "Qbs core team" => Qbs developer. Of
> course qbs users can contribute, but users don't always have
> time/willing to dig into Qbs source code and hack it around.
> How can i provide my own backend? Do I have to write code, and build
> it against Qbs source tree? Or can it be provided via a local qbs
> file?

It's just a module. To provide support for a completely custom toolchain, you'd create a cpp directory somewhere, possibly setting a search path so that it is found, and put a module file in there with the necessary rules and a condition that matches your toolchain.
In most cases, it's more likely that the new toolchain is somewhat related to an existing one (typically gcc), so only minor tweaks would be needed. In any case, the code you'll write is written in the same language as your project files.


Christian