[Qt5-feedback] Qt5's qmake

[lars.knoll at nokia.com]

On 5/16/11 9:56 AM, "ext Andre Somers" <andre at familiesomers.nl> wrote:

>Op Vr, 13 mei, 2011 5:53 pm, schreef Joerg Bornemann:
>> On 12/05/2011 18:12, ext Andre Somers wrote:
>>
>>> Not that I know much about make-files and their problems, but to me it
>>> seems like Qt could learn from its experiences with QML in building
>>> something declarative-yet-scriptable for building Qt apps.
>>
>> In 2009 there was this article was posted on Qt Labs:
>> 
>>http://labs.qt.nokia.com/2009/10/12/to-make-or-not-to-make-qmake-and-beyo
>>nd/
>>
>> Its a nice collection of thoughts about a 'future qmake'. The language
>> part embraces JSON but nowadays QML + JavaScript could be the choice.
>> And Qt Creator would of course benefit from a seamless integration of
>> the build tool.
>
>What is not in there, and what _would_ be very nice to have, is making
>sure the tool chain will finally really support using file paths with all
>the characters that may be in there, including spaces. Where needed, the
>tool should properly escape them for passing them to compilers, linkers or
>other tools involved, but the user should not be bothered with that, nor
>should there be a limitation that Qt be installed in a path without spaces
>or any such nonsense. We are long past the age of 8.3 file names, lets
>make sure we can actually use that.

Yes, we all agree fully with that. But fixing this in qmake is almost
impossible partly also due to it's syntax.

In any case, just to make this clear in the whole discussion: While build
systems are important, a change here is not the main goal for Qt 5. We can
change the build system Qt uses at any point in time (in practice it's
probably limited to a minor release), and there is no need at all to tie
this discussion and to a 5.0 requirement.

Cheers,
Lars