[Qt-creator] Qt Creator 3.2 dropping support for Mac OS X 10.6

Tue Jan 28 18:57:42 CET 2014

On 27 Jan 2014, at 09:15, Ziller Eike <Eike.Ziller at digia.com> wrote:

> 
> On Jan 24, 2014, at 7:12 PM, Jonathan S. Shapiro <shap at eros-os.org> wrote:
> 
>> At the risk of asking a naive, but well-intentioned question, I wonder if we aren't looking at this the wrong way.
>> 
>> Anyone is free to rebuild QT Creator from source on any environment they want. The impediment going forward is that QT Creator will start relying on C++11 features. The problem isn't that OSX 10.6 is no longer supported.The problem is that the last "official" compilers for OSX 10.6 don't support C++11.
>> 
>> Which begs the question: why can't people who need QT Creator on OSX 10.6 bring up a more recent version of the GCC/Binutils toolchain or a more recent version of CLang and build QT Creator for themselves?
> 
> They probably can. But it would not be anything the Qt Project or Qt Creator team would support. Also, deploying such an application would probably get more complicated, since the non-standard libraries that this would end up using need to be bundled and shipped as well.

Yes, the main problem in supporting 10.6 is that libc++ (required for C++11) is not available with 10.6.
One can compile libc++ on 10.6 and ship it, but it has to either
1) do not link any system library that links libstdcpp
or
2) ensure that the core compiled libc++ is binary compatible with the libstdcpp shipped by apple   (note that some types std:string are still incompatible, but that is not an issue for qt/qtcreator, and at least things like exceptions work).

creator links system libraries that link libstdc++, so option 1 is not feasible.

With 10.7 apples ships libstdc++ and libc++ that fulfil 2.
For 10.6 one should carefully look at the differences between libstdc++ of 10.6 and 10.7.
Maybe it is easy and one can simply use clang and selfcompiled libc++ of 10.7, but I found nobody that actually checked this...

So shap you see that supporting it is not so trivial.

Fawzi

> 
> The same goes for non-Apple-provided lldb on Mac OS 10.6.
> 
> Br, Eike
> 
>> When an application developer commits to support a vendor-unsupported release, this sort of thing is part of the cost.
>> 
>> Adam: I think you should look into bringing up one of those compilers as a fall-back solution. I also think your company needs to consider the wisdom of committing their entire development team to an unsupported OS. If I were one of your customers, knowing about that would make me very nervous.
>> 
>> 
>> shap
>> 
>> 
>> 
>> On Fri, Jan 24, 2014 at 6:23 AM, Michael Jackson <imikejackson at gmail.com> wrote:
>> I am going to chime in here a bit on the OS X 10.6.8 thing. I mainly create software for scientists located at Govt/Enterprise/Academic installations where getting new computers can be a problem or even just getting them updated to newer operating systems is a problem. So I compile my software on 10.6.8 using Apple's Xcode for that system. I run OS X 10.6.8 SERVER in a Parallels VM to do the builds. Note that this is ALLOWED under the EULA for OS X 10.6.8 SERVER but not Client. SERVER is $20 from the Apple Store. You need to call them to get it.
>>  For my normal development I use 10.8.5 with QtCreator 3.0 for my everyday work. When I need to do a release I have to warp back in time to the 10.6.8 VM and compile/fix compile errors there. Note that this does stop me from using C++11 features that I would like to use. The situation may rectify itself in the coming year as those last few machines finally get updated to something newer.
>> 
>> All that said, I'll throw my vote to keep QtCreator moving forward and if that means dropping support for 10.6.8 then I'll just have to move on. I can still use Xcode in a pinch if I need to under 10.6.8. And it isn't like QtCreator 3.0 is suddenly going to stop working when the next QtCreator comes out.
>> 
>> Mike Jackson
>> 
>> On Jan 24, 2014, at 7:10 AM, Steve Atkins <steve at blighty.com> wrote:
>> 
>>> 
>>> On Jan 24, 2014, at 3:46 AM, Nikos Chantziaras <realnc at gmail.com> wrote:
>>> 
>>>> Creator doesn't build software. It's not a compiler. So you are not
>>>> depending on it to build anything, actually.
>>> 
>>> If you’re targeting 10.6, you need to be able to debug code on 10.6 - if
>>> your IDE won’t run there, you’re stuck with using a commandline debugger
>>> and you lose a large chunk of the benefits of using an IDE.
>>> 
>>> (This doesn’t affect me, as I follow Apples lead and don’t really support
>>> any version of OS X more than one major version older than current.)
>>> 
>>> Cheers,
>>> Steve
>>> 
>>>> 
>>>> It would seem to be that someone in your company is confused about
>>>> compilers :-)
>>>> 
>>>> 
>>>> On 23/01/14 20:16, Adam Light wrote:
>>>>> All but one developer at my (smallish) company is still using OSX 10.6.8
>>>>> because we need 10.6 to be able to build the current shipping version of
>>>>> our main product. We all use Qt Creator, so a Creator 3.2 that would not
>>>>> work on 10.6 would be a problem for us.
>>>>> 
>>>>> Adam
>>>>> 
>>>>> 
>>>>> On Thu, Jan 23, 2014 at 4:29 AM, Daniel Teske <daniel.teske at digia.com
>>>>> <mailto:daniel.teske at digia.com>> wrote:
>>>>> 
>>>>>  Hi,
>>>>> 
>>>>>  Let's make this:
>>>>>> Qt Creator 3.2:
>>>>>> - drop support for compiling & running Qt Creator on 10.6
>>>>> 
>>>>>> We want to start using C++11 also in Qt Creator, and 10.6 is the
>>>>>  only thing
>>>>>> preventing that. Since 10.6 is deployment target only for Qt, we
>>>>>  don’t
>>>>>> necessarily need to keep “its IDE” running there (yes, that’s a
>>>>>  Qt-centric
>>>>>> way of looking at Qt Creator).
>>>>> 
>>>>>  a actual independant proposal (since it doesn't really depend on what qt
>>>>>  supports) and cross post it to qt-creator for some wider exposure.
>>>>> 
>>>>>  Actually using C++11 would also mean bumping the minimum supported
>>>>>  compiler
>>>>>  for *compiling* Qt Creator. That's somewhat separate, but I would
>>>>>  assume we
>>>>>  would require at least lamba and auto support for compiling Qt
>>>>>  Creator 3.2.
>>>>> 
>>>>>  That means MSVC 2010, clang 3.1 or g++ 4.5 if I remember correctly.
>>>>> 
>>>>>  daniel
>>>>>  _______________________________________________
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>>>>>  http://lists.qt-project.org/mailman/listinfo/qt-creator
>>>>> 
>>>>> 
>>>>> 
>>>>> 
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>>>> 
>>>> 
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> 
> -- 
> Eike Ziller, Senior Software Engineer - Digia, Qt
> 
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