QtCS2021 - Qt Buildsystem Feedback

From Qt Wiki
Jump to navigation Jump to search
The printable version is no longer supported and may have rendering errors. Please update your browser bookmarks and please use the default browser print function instead.


Session Summary

  • Qt 6 switched to using CMake for building Qt. The session is meant to gather feedback / pain points about building Qt as well as using Qt in a user project (from a build system perspective). General questions about build system usage are also welcome.

Session Owners

  • Alexandru Croitor (alexandru.croitor@qt.io)

Notes

(Notes by alcroito)

Documentation links

Status update

  • 99% of platforms and repositories ported
  • Various improvements to CMake upstream
  • New public CMake API for qml modules in 6.2
  • New public CMake API plugin, executable, translation creation
  • Still things to work on like unified deployment story, android multi-ABI, better docs

Feedback session

  • Some positive feedback
  • Some pain points still exist
  • IDE integration can be improved (don't reconfigure, don't rebuild, don't clobber files when not needed)
  • Sanitizer flags should propagate to applications like in qmake https://bugreports.qt.io/browse/QTBUG-92083
  • Discussed if any issues can arise as part of qtquickcontrols2 -> qtdeclarative merge (qmlimportscanner issues in tests mostly)
  • Request to add a new feature for a documentation toggle of CMake vs qmake code
  • Request to document that one can build a test without having to build all of Qt
  • Request to document how to get the command line that is used to run a specific test or test function
  • qmake was easier to use for standard projects, but extremely hard for non-standard projects
  • Positive feedback on providing a unified deployment story (non-official linuxdeployqt is a pain point) https://bugreports.qt.io/browse/QTBUG-74940
  • No longer being able to open a Qt library and/or tests as self-contained projects in Qt Creator slows down development
  • Question about if CMake allows to bundled macos / ios related data as qmake allowed to, can be done using https://cmake.org/cmake/help/latest/prop_tgt/MACOSX_BUNDLE_INFO_PLIST.html
  • Documentation needs to be updated in many places to also include the cmake way of doing things: like in this post where it only shows the qmake addition but no cmake: https://doc-snapshots.qt.io/qt6-dev/qtqml-cppintegration-topic.html
    • This is being worked on as part of new QML CMake API documentation
  • Request to add support for sanitizers when using MSVC
  • Platform plugins are not built by default when building a test (this should be fixed though?)
  • There seems to be a bit a dependency creep; some small changes in some obscure file seem to trigger a full rebuild of qtbase, this also propagates to Qt for Python
    • Needs thorough investigation
  • Pointed out that CMake help can be received at https://discourse.cmake.org/

Poll

* 65% ish - Prefer cmake + ninja
* 5%  ish - Prefer qmake + make
* 10% ish - Both are fine
* 1%      - I wanted to choose something else
* Some people didn't answer
Retrieved from "https://wiki.qt.io/index.php?title=QtCS2021_-_Qt_Buildsystem_Feedback&oldid=38485"