[Qt-creator] Some thoughts about 2.5

[Geronimo Ma. Hernandez]

On Montag 28 Mai 2012, André Pönitz wrote:
> On Mon, May 28, 2012 at 06:45:53AM +0200, Geronimo Ma. Hernandez wrote:
> > The log is attached. (I changed the absolute path of my home directory to
> > a '~')
> 
> The documentation mentions
> 
>   "The minimal supported version is 7.2. Using GDB version 7.4 is highly
>   recommended with Qt Creator 2.5. For Qt Creator 2.6 the minimal
>   supported version will be raised to GDB 7.4."

That's very poor. 

I guess, QtCreator was working with gdb V7.0 some day (very long time ago). 
The binary has all information, as kdevelop and netbeans are able to extract 
and show the information right.
 
> Qt Creator heavily uses the python scripting interface gdb features
> since 7.0. The available functions and their behaviour unfortunately
> change even with patch releases, so supporting all versions at the
> same time without falling back to expensive workarounds is impossible.

Well, in that case, I expect QtCreator use different parsers depending on the 
gdb-version. 

I'm quite sure, that I'm not the only user of debian stable, who likes to use 
a sophisticated ide.

> Anyway, the log mentions
>  
> data=[{iname=\"local.this\",name=\"this\",addr=\"0x623470\",addr=\"0x62347
> 0\",numchild=\"11\",origaddr=\"0x7ffff6056da8\",type=\"cConnectionHandler\"
> ,value=\"{...}\",},{iname=\"local.nTrans\",name=\"nTrans\",addr=\"0x7ffff60
> 56e58\",numchild=\"0\",numchild=\"0\",type=\"size_t\",value=\"0\",},...
> 
> i.e. it produces proper data for 'this', 'nTrans', 'rv' etc.

Well, the log might contain that data, but the ide does not show any data. 
For no item - no matter, whether it is an atomic type like int or double or a 
compound datatype.

> I suggest to grab a supported version of gdb e.g. from http://builds.qt-
> project.org/ and retry, and also make sure that you are using a debug
> version of your application

Just for curiosity, I built a recent gdb-version and now it works.

Again: from my point of view, this behavior of QtCreator is very poor.
With all that parsing effort it should be able to rise an appropriate error 
message, telling the user about an outdated gdb or the like.

I know from my java-projects, that supporting external tools by parsing their 
output is grunt work. Especially the support for different releases. 
Yes, nobody likes that work, but I think, its essential for professional 
products - and I consider QtCreator having the potential for being 
professional ;)


kind regards

Gero