[Qt-creator] Some thoughts about 2.5

[Vojtěch Král]

Hi,
   just some thoughts...

On 2012-05-28 06:48, Geronimo Ma. Hernandez wrote:

> If an ide needs another build-system, I expect, that it offers enuf
> wizzards/dialogs, that I can manage the build without having to learn 
> the
> build suite.

This is quite a wrong assumption in case of QtCreator + CMake.
The main build system of QtC is qmake - Qt's native build system.
QtC has almost full control over this build system, it's the "native" build
system of QtC and it's the choice for beginners.

This is not the case with CMake. CMake can be a very complex system,
it is wildly extensible and it is made by different authors than QtC.
It has a completely different release cycle, philosophy, etc...

Therefore, QtC has only very limited control over CMake files.
For example, when you add files to CMake project, you HAVE to add them 
manually,
QtC has no way to determine in what manner exactly you add your files
and in which CMakeList that should be done,
because in CMake there's a whole lot of possibilities how to "add a 
file".

It is expected that the developer knows all their CMakeLists by heart
and only requires QtC to follow the steps how to build the project,
pretty much the same way as it would've been done in command line.

The CMake support in QtC is for people who know CMake but who like to 
use QtC.

TL;DR: You need to know CMake in order to be able to use it properly in 
QtC.

---

Also, let me make a general observation here.

You seem to use quite a lot of diverse tools. Netbeans, Eclipse, Ant...

If you like Ant, why don't you stick to it? Why do you bother learning
how to work with CMake and/or QtC?

It looks to me like you need a bit of C++ in your project and you're 
looking
for tools that will do a lot of the project setup work for you 
automatically.
I'm afraid that QtC + CMake is not at all that case.
And it is questionable, whether there is any tool at all that can do that for you.

As far as I know, NetBeans and Ant do support C++ don't they?

Regards,
~Vojtěch Král