[Qt-creator] proposals for generic project manager

[Sven Goericke]

On 08/14/2013 11:51 AM, Daniel Teske wrote:
> On Wednesday 14 Aug 2013 11:46:08 Sven Goericke wrote:
>> Hi,
>> while implementing at least the "Add New Folder" option in generic
>> projects (and in turn get an overview how project management works) i
>> got some ideas for improvements:
>>
>> 1. Instead of maintaing a "<project>.files" list with files belonging to
>> the project define a set of file-extensions which should be used in the
>> project. So you no longer need to update the <project>.files outside
>> Creator but it will pickup all needed files on startup.
> No, that's in that way by design. Others have written scripts to easily update 
> the .files file from their real build system. Since Creator watches that file, 
> the project tree gets automatically updated. That's not possible with globs 
> without watching the directory tree. (Which is impossible to do.)
>
Well, we use a make-target for that:
update_qtcreator_files:
	$(verbose)find \
		$(filter-out ./,$(foreach
component,$(component_names),$($(component)_dir))) \
		$(foreach component,$(component_unittest_names),$($(component)_dir))
build Makefile version -type f > $(project).files
	$(verbose)find . -name '*.[sd]dl' -type f | sed -e 's:\./::g' >>
$(project).files
	$(verbose)find \
		$(foreach component,$(component_names),$($(component)_include_dir)) \
		$(foreach
component,$(component_unittest_names),$($(component)_include_dir))
-maxdepth 0 > $(project).includes

It works, but i think it's annoying because you have to call "make
update_qtcreator_files" anywhere outside Creator. If you say there's no
other way i must accept that. But maybe we could add a menu or at least
a shortcut and an option where users can specify an arbitary command as
the "update creator files" command. Meaning one would only need to use a
shortcut to update the files.

>> 2. Preprocess-Makros per build-configuration. This should also be
>> possible. Defining them per build-config would at least help to distinct
>> between Debug and Release builds (and get the code-model updated per
>> config).
> How would the .config file look like then?
>  
I would need to figure out that. Because the you can use conditional
Macros in the .config file (yes i use that for the different target
platforms i support) maybe one could do something like

#if defined(QTC_GENERIC_BUILD_CONFIG_NAME)
#... (user defines here
#endif

and add the QTC_GENERIC_BUILD_CONFIG_NAME to the defines for the
code-model when selecting the configuration in Creator. It's just an
idea, maybe it has to be done in another way.

>> 3. Get rid of the default "all" and "clean" targets. Even if they are
>> widely used those targets are not a requirement in any generic
>> build-system. Also (as the word "generic" suggests even don't assume
>> that "make" is used as build-command).
> Yes, it should be just a command to run, which by default can be make.
> 
Defaulting to make would be Ok (i guess most of Creator users depending
on the generic project manager use it with make)...
Sven