[Qt-qml] Jar-like zip archive of QML code

[warwick.allison at nokia.com]

You can add new schemes to Qt, so you can add this to your own application. The biggest "problem" is that you need a new scheme for each existing scheme. In reality, you probably only need to support two:

ziphttp://host/dir/file.zip/dir/file.qml
zipfile:///dir/file.zip/dir/file.qml

Qt even has zip format support hidden somewhere in it.

From: qt-qml-bounces at trolltech.com [mailto:qt-qml-bounces at trolltech.com] On Behalf Of ext Attila Csipa
Sent: Thursday, November 25, 2010 9:25 PM
To: Ville M. Vainio
Cc: qt-qml
Subject: Re: [Qt-qml] Jar-like zip archive of QML code

On Thu, Nov 25, 2010 at 12:00 AM, Ville M. Vainio <vivainio at gmail.com<mailto:vivainio at gmail.com>> wrote:
Every now and again (case in points - yesterday after Tampere MeeGo
meetup) this pops up in conversations - people seem to miss a .jar
like archive format for QML files. Basically, this would be a zipped
bunch of qml files, and perhaps c++ modules.

Such a thing could be used to easily distribute qml assets. While you
can currently bundle files together in a program binary using Qt
resource system, that doesn't make sense for libraries. Also, a
compressed archive of qml files would be easier to modify without
messing with full toolchains.

The scheme (once specified) would probably not be that hard to
implement, it'd most probably involve adding a new url scheme to the
current "network transparent" import system.

While you could argue that Python did just fine without zipimport for
a long time, eventually they deemed it a valuable feature to have.

Another motivation is that file/directory operations on mobile devices can be
cumbersome if the project has many files (think send via bluetooth, download
from the web, etc). The inclusion of C++ modules can be tricky, but
there are plenty of precedents that can be learned from (JAR,
zipimport/eggs). It's all the question of how simple or smart does one want
to make it. The simplest way would probably be just to zip it according to
some architecture/versioning scheme, but I would also consider
mimicking/retrofitting the rcc (i.e. if I specify rcc -o  qmlproject.qrz
qmlproject.qrc I would get a zip file which has the files/namespace
organized the same way it was in the qrc - this also makes potential
development and qmake integration easier). Alternatively, that could be
a ziprcc executable (again, we have precedent in the form of pyrcc).

Best regards,
Attila
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