Hi, > -----Original Message----- > From: [email protected] > [mailto:[email protected]] > On Behalf Of Vladimir Minenko > Sent: 24 January 2014 12:26 > To: [email protected] > Subject: [Development] Does Qt need a unified, cross-platform app > deployment for devices and desktops? > > Hello all, > > I just wanted to bring up for a discussion an enhancement which concerns > not only BlackBerry 10 as a platform, but also other platforms Qt runs on as > well. > > We recently submitted the change https://codereview.qt- > project.org/#change,75441 (still WIP) which allows a Qt developer on BB10 > just to do "make deploy" on a random .pro file to get that project packaged > and deployed in a BB10 device without any additional typing. BB10 has > already a full integration for these steps Qt Creator. The above change > targets to significantly simply steps required on the command line. This is > not > only for those who (still) use the command line, but also for a CI system > which would be able to automatically create and deploy test apps and unit > tests in a cross platform manner and without "insider hacks". > *snip* > > So the question is if owners/maintainers of all platform see this need and we > can agree targeting some unification done in a future Qt release. > > [1]: *snip* > Win desktop: > http://qt-project.org/forums/viewthread/25714 > Win RT: > http://blog.qt.digia.com/blog/2013/06/14/introduction-to-windows-rt- > frameworks/
I can try to lay out the basic principles on WinRT/Windows Phone (and to a lesser extent, Desktop Windows). I don't claim to know anything about deployment on other platforms, but hopefully others will speak up on how they see an alignment of these command-line "APIs". I've separated the terminology of "deployment" into several (possibly separate) steps, which could potentially be stated as independent make targets. In a unified make API, we hopefully can come to an agreement on what names to give those steps which do the essentially the same thing on each platform. 1. Collection of Qt libraries and plugins with the executable (make collect) On Desktop Windows, this is what we call "deployment", because simply copying the DLLs, plugins, translations, etc. with the app is normally enough to get it the app to run. We use the tool windeployqt to do this; perhaps Friedemann can state if he has any plans to meld this with the other "deployqt"s out there. On WinRT/WinPhone, this "collect" step is also required. My proposal for this task (currently called "make windeployqt") is here: https://codereview.qt-project.org/#change,74461 Currently, make install (which copies files defined by the user in the .pro file) is not part of this operation, but probably should be. 2. Packaging (make package) On Desktop Windows, it might be enough to zip up the collected Qt files and build artifacts and send it off. Or, generating an msi or installer package might be needed. I don't believe we have any API for this apart from the Installer Framework to do this, but I don't see anything preventing such a qmake feature from existing. On WinRT/WinPhone, packaging is generally required, but is an optional step for deployment-time apps on WinRT. We don't currently have a make step for this, but probably should. Packaging can be done by our runner tool (winrtrunner, https://codereview.qt-project.org/#change,75071) or via the native tools that come with the SDK (or Visual Studio, of course). In any case, it appears that BB10 also uses a "package" step and would benefit from a unified make target API here. 3. Installation (make deploy) This step could probably be called make install, but calling it that would likely require changes to the current behavior of make install. It also implies a "make undeploy" step which uninstalls the package. It's likely valuable to be able to (possibly remotely) install a Desktop Windows package, so that's what this would do there. On WinRT/WinPhone, the generated package is installed to the device with the runner tool mentioned above. In our case and likely others, it probably involves some arguments in the makefile or environment to actually tell which device to install it to and where. 4. Run (make run) This step is likely outside the scope of deployment, but I'd thought I'd mention it in case we want to define a unified API for that too. Steps like run (or start, stop, suspend, debug, kill, etc.) might also make sense to define cross-platform. So, depending on the target, make deploy would invoke a series of deployment subtargets before finishing up installed (ready to use or debug) on the target device. In some cases (e.g. local debugging on Mac with Qt installed as a framework), this may be a no-op. However, we should still be able to agree on what each step does and how to come up a definition of these steps which can work in a cross-platform way. -Andrew _______________________________________________ Development mailing list [email protected] http://lists.qt-project.org/mailman/listinfo/development
