[Qt5-feedback] Qt5's qmake

[Aaron J. Seigo]

On Thursday, May 12, 2011 08:19:43 Charley Bay wrote:
> My vote would be a new tool, from the ground-up, using greater heuristics,
> emphasizing simple/clean project configuration definitions. 

A configuration tool that is cross platform and which has comprehensive 
support for the various needs of real world applications, both proprietary and 
open source, is not trivial to say the least.

Also, I'm not sure Qt really needs to be in the business of creating and 
maintaining such a tool. There is enough else to be done.

Instead of reinventing the wheel to little end, despite the allure of thinking 
we can do it better than anyone else has before us ;) , I highly recommend 
adopting a known, proven and widely used tool.

This would save on human resources, communicate the "right" things as to Qt 
being open and not a NIH driven effort and allow existing knowledge that 
exists around such a tool to be repurposed.

I personally would recommend cmake for the following reasons:

* It is widely used, particularly by the Qt-using open source communities, 
including KDE

* It is well proven to work for applications using Qt whether it is to biuld 
simple applications, complex applications or shared libraries (Qt has all 
three scenarios)

* It is well proven to work in a cross-platform manner, covering Linux, 
Windows, Mac and many others.

* It is easy to learn and there is a large amount of knowledge acrued around 
the use of cmake in the extant community

* The cmake project has paid developers working on it and the project has 
proven over the years to be open to meeting the needs of their users, as can 
be seen by the number of enhancements made in response to the needs of KDE.

As others in this thread, I would love to see qmake be retired for a variety 
of reasons. Doing so without incuring huge engineering costs and using a tool 
that would work seamlessly with hundreds (thousands?) of Qt-using open source 
software products would be a very nice bonus win.

-- 
Aaron J. Seigo
humru othro a kohnu se
GPG Fingerprint: 8B8B 2209 0C6F 7C47 B1EA  EE75 D6B7 2EB1 A7F1 DB43

KDE core developer sponsored by Qt Development Frameworks
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