[Qt-creator] Updated .user-file saving mechanismn

[Danny Price]

On Wed, Feb 3, 2010 at 8:42 AM, Tobias Hunger <tobias.hunger at nokia.com>wrote:

> On 02.02.2010 19:22, ext Danny Price wrote:
> > I'm so used to trashing those files I've almost stopped thinking about it
> :(
>
> In which situations do you trash those files? I have not had complaints
> about those files breaking. The exception being going back and forth
> between stable and unreleased versions of creator. My change should
> improve this situation a bit by keeping the stable versions .user-file
> around. So now you can at least copy the old version's file back when
> heading back to a stable release.
>

When working with nested subdir projects, I often get 'executable not found,
permissions wrong?' type errors when trying to run the binary. Creator's
support for subdirs is flakey at best (see below) so I often have to open
the project itself seperately so that it is top level. This must confuse the
user file as I have to delete it and reload the project to get the program
to run again.

I've also had issues where builds will fail for strange reasons in which
case trashing the use file again solves the problem. When in doubt, trash
the file.



>
> > How do you set project dependencies then? I have a huge set of libraries
> > and I have found Qt's 'session' system (which is based around those user
> > files)
>
> Sessions are meant to store one users state (open files and projects,
> bookmarks, breakpoints, etc.). It is not meant to be shared in a team.
>
> I have not really looked into the session system yet, so I can not
> comment on the implementation details. It is very much separate from the
> .user files. From what I understood so far sessions reference projects
> (in the QMake case: .pro-files), not .user files. So they should at
> least not be effected by .user-file trashing to much:-)
>
> > to be absolutely useless because those files cannot be used
> > across platform or even among teams on the same platform.
>
> They contain user-specific setups and are not meant to be shared in a team.
>

Project dependencies are not user-specific setups, nor are build steps when
everyone is using the same tools and platforms. The latter are uses to set
version information, run unit tests...how are these things user-specific?

I have managed to do a lot of this in the .pro files now (using undocumented
qmake hacks - joy) so Creator forces the user to become something of a
power-user beyond trivial projects.

User-specific setups should include break-points, auto-completion caches and
stuff like that. Not major project settings.


>
> > You guys are clearly spending time polishing Creator's 'Project' screen
> > (I see the layout has changed again in the master) but I cannot use it
> > at all.
>
> These changes should be even more important to people trashing their
> .user files regularly:-)
>
> Seriously: There will be more changes to that soon to ease working with
> device SDKs.
>
> > I have to set build settings and project dependencies (where
> > possible) in the .pro files.
>
> Yes, information meant to be shared in a team is better kept in the
> build system itself. Dependencies can e.g. get encoded by SUBDIRS
> template in .pro-files (which can then be shared in a team).
>

I've been using subdirs since day one :)

But creator doesn't play well with subdirs. There is zero wizard support so
it's entirely manual process. Until very recently, you couldn't even build a
specific subdir project - you had to build the whole lot (and still do in
the released versions). And Creator's issue with failing to relink with
changed code means that a build is often not sufficient; you have to do a
rebuild!

Everyone seems to use subdirs in Creator including the Nokia guys at the Dev
Days and the KDAB courses I have attended. And all of them seem to be
suffering the same issues. I don't think anyone uses sessions with flat
projects.

The only reason I stick with Creator after all of this is because of the
superior code editor, auto-complete and the suckiness of XCode.


>
> Best Regards,
> Tobias
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>
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