[Qt-creator] Switching to more "semantic" versioning scheme

[Eike Ziller]

> On Mar 24, 2021, at 15:18, Jason H <jhihn at gmx.com> wrote:
> 
>> Sent: Wednesday, March 24, 2021 at 5:05 AM
>> From: "Eike Ziller" <Eike.Ziller at qt.io>
>> To: "qt-creator" <qt-creator at qt-project.org>
>> Subject: [Qt-creator] Switching to more "semantic" versioning scheme
>> 
>> We want to switch Qt Creator to semantic versioning, which means bumping the major version for each feature release, since we don’t keep binary compatibility between these.
>> 
>> - Next release after 4.15 is Qt Creator 5.
>> - Followed by Qt Creator 6 in December 2021.
>> - Qt Creator 7 in spring 2022
>> - and so on.
> 
> Though I understand the reasoning, I think this would be confusing. 
> Qt Creator has definite impact on Qt code, w.r.t. parsing. I'm thinking of how many
> releases it took QtC to support QML Enums.

Hi,

this has nothing to do with the Qt version that was used to build Qt Creator with.

> I think a more meaningful system would
> be to version it with the Qt build version, with the Z (x.y.z) being the 
> Qt Creator release with Qt version x.y. 

The Qt version that was used to build Qt Creator is mostly irrelevant for its functionality.
Qt Creator built with Qt 5.14 has the same functionality as built with Qt 5.15, and after we finished support for building Qt Creator with Qt 6, that will still have the same functionality  as Qt Creator built with Qt 5.15 or 5.14. We don’t need to build Qt Creator with Qt 6 to support Qt 6, and building Qt Creator with Qt 6 is no advantage for supporting Qt 6.

Using Qt version numbers as a base for Qt Creator version numbers creates an impression of coupling between Qt Creator and Qt that does not exist.

Additionally there are 3 Qt Creator “feature” releases per year, whereas there are 2 Qt minor releases.

> Examples: 
> Qt Creator 5.15.4 (5th release based on Qt 5.15.2)
> Qt Creator 6.0.1. (2nd release based on 6.0)
> 
> Compared to:
> Qt Creator 7 in 2022,
> Qt Creator 9 in 2023,
> Qt Creator 13 in 2025,
> Qt Creator 23 in 2030.
> Qt Creator 33 in 2040.
> 
> 
> Or maybe no one cares about the QtCreator Qt built-with version? And maybe I shouldn't care either? 
> I just always wonder "What is an appropriate version of QtC to be using with Qt x.y?"

Usually the latest Qt Creator has best support for latest Qt, and for previous Qt versions as well.

Br, Eike

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Eike Ziller
Principal Software Engineer

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