[Qt-creator] Couple of questions about the design of Qt Creator

[Elvis Stansvik]

2017-09-11 9:50 GMT+02:00 Eike Ziller <Eike.Ziller at qt.io>:
>
>> On Sep 11, 2017, at 09:24, Elvis Stansvik <elvstone at gmail.com> wrote:
>>
>> 2017-09-10 11:31 GMT+02:00 Elvis Stansvik <elvstone at gmail.com>:
>>> 2017-09-10 11:03 GMT+02:00 Elvis Stansvik <elvstone at gmail.com>:
>>>> Hi all,
>>>>
>>>> In a quest to find inspiration for good Qt application architectures,
>>>> I've been looking at the plugin based one you're using in Qt Creator.
>>>> It strikes me as a really nice design.
>>>>
>>>> I've been reading the available docs on it, and dug into the code a
>>>> bit. This may be a bit much to ask, but I was wondering if any of you
>>>> devs could answer a few questions that popped up? It would be much
>>>> appreciated!
>>>>
>>>> It's really just two questions, about two different topics:
>>>>
>>>> 1. The Invoker / invoke<...> Thingie:
>>>>
>>>> You have ExtensionSystem::Invoker and the associated invoke<..>
>>>> helper, which are syntactic sugar for achieving "soft" extension
>>>> points. It seems it's not used that much (?). I grepped for
>>>> "Invoker|invoke<" in the code and could only find a few uses of it. I
>>>> also grepped for "invokeMethod" to see if the approach was being used
>>>> "manually" so to speak (without the sugar), and found a few more hits.
>>>>
>>>> What was the motivation for adding this? I assume it's for cases where
>>>> you want a looser coupling between plugins (no linking, no shared
>>>> header), but can you give an example of when you really wanted that
>>>> looser coupling and why?
>>>>
>>>> 2. The Plugin System in General:
>>>>
>>>> Is there anything about the plugin system in its current form, or how
>>>> it is used, that you would do fundamentally different if you could do
>>>> it all over again? Any areas that you find messy/awkward, that need a
>>>> re-think/makeover? In short: What are the biggest warts in the code in
>>>> your opinion?
>>>
>>> As soon as I hit send, I realized I have a third question:
>>>
>>> 3. Communication Between Plugins:
>>>
>>> There seems to be two main mechanisms through which plugins
>>> communicate: Either objects that implement shared interfaces are added
>>> to the plugin manager object pool and picked up by downstream or
>>> upstream plugins (in the top-down or bottom-up phase of plugin
>>> initialization, respectively), or a singleton instance is acquired and
>>> calls made on it.
>>>
>>> Is the former approach used when dependants provide functionality to
>>> their dependees (which are unknown), and the latter approach used when
>>> dependees use their dependants (which are known)? Is that the deciding
>>> factor?
>>
>> And finally, a couple of more down-to-earth questions:
>>
>> 1. ICore, the class is concrete, so why the I in the name? Was it
>> abstract at one point?
>
> Yes historically.
>
>> How do you decide whether a class should get
>> the interface 'I' in its name?
>
> It’s a mess ;)
> I suppose the trend goes to not prepend the ‘I’.

Ok, I figured there was a history :)

>
>> The same with e.g. IContext, though
>> that one at least has a few virtuals and is used as a base class (but
>> no pure ones AFAICS, so still concrete).
>
> Historically these classes where “pure” virtual (except for the QObject base).
> We moved to a more “configurable” approach then to avoid the need to create subclasses for every little thing, while keeping the option open in many cases.

Alright, this is what I suspected. Thanks for confirming.

>
>> 2. The relatively liberal use of singleton classes. We all know that
>> is a debated subject, and I don't have an opinion either way. I'm just
>> interested in if you have some (spoken or unspoken) policy regarding
>> singletons in the project. Do you want to minimize the use of them, or
>> is it OK for newer code, or is it judged on a case-by-case basis? Have
>> you had any moments where you really wish you hadn't used singletons?
>> (e.g. I know it can sometimes hurt testability).
>
> We always had a liberal amount of singletons in Qt Creator, and we even moved most of them to be classes with mostly static methods a while ago. There are no plans to move away from that. If you have a central hub for “managing” something, feel free to use a singleton/static methods.

Okay. I also personally think the convenience of singletons outweighs
their drawbacks in many cases. Nice to see this liberating attitude.

Thanks for sharing Eike.

Elvis

>
> Br, Eike
>
> --
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>
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