[Qt5-feedback] Qt5's qmake

[Marcus D. Hanwell]

On Sat, May 14, 2011 at 11:53 AM, Doug Schaefer <cdtdoug at gmail.com> wrote:
> On Sat, May 14, 2011 at 10:14 AM, Peter Kümmel <syntheticpp at gmx.net> wrote:
>> On 12.05.2011 22:21, Thiago Macieira wrote:
>>> On Thursday, 12 de May de 2011 14:38:37 Ian Monroe wrote:
>>>> On Thu, May 12, 2011 at 14:15, Doug Schaefer<cdtdoug at gmail.com>  wrote:
>>>>> On Thu, May 12, 2011 at 12:09 PM, Ian Monroe<ian at monroe.nu>  wrote:
>>>>>> So whatever qmake+1 is, it shouldn't let configuration be an
>>>>>> afterthought. And I hope we just use cmake.
>>>>>
>>>>> +1 for cmake. It's out there, it's customizable, and if needed, we
>>>>> should be able to get changes upstream. I don't think it's a good
>>>>> thing people have to learn yet another build tool. I'd rather they
>>>>> focus on making great apps with Qt.
>>>>
>>>> The fact that cmake is open to changes can't be emphasized too much.
>>>
>>> They are indeed open for changes. We discussed with them a replacement for
>>> qmake about a year and a half ago, but it never went anywhere. Still, Kitware
>>> was very responsive to most of our concerns, about the needs of the IDE to
>>> control the project file, the device deployment and packaging, etc.
>>>
>>> I think there's a blog on Labs that listed what our requirements were.
>>>
>>> However, one thing they were not open for change is the language.
>>>
>>
>> I would design the wished language on paper with all the needed features,
>> and starting the implementation on base of a cmake-fork. Then you would have
>> all the existing cmake features, which could step-by-step be migrated to
>> your new build tool language. This way you get very fast a running system.
>>
>> Adding a new script language to cmake isn't that hard, I know about three
>> experimental bindings, QtScript, Lua, and AngleScript. Writing a wrapper to
>> get rid of the cmake function names is also simple.
>>
>> And assuming you have really man-power/budget available for this job
>> (qmake is 'Done') it would take only some months to replace qmake.
>>
>> And maybe there is interest to bring the changes upstream.
>
> Since cmake already has Qt4 support built-in, I assume it'll be pretty
> straightforward to add Qt5, no? I think a lot of Qt devs would be
> happy enough with that.
>
I don't think there is any question of that going away. Many of us at
Kitware use Qt on a daily basis in large and small projects, and the
CMake GUI is also Qt based. I would love to see even tighter
integration with Qt, and know of several of us who will be building Qt
5 early releases, testing it with CMake and our code.

Marcus