[Qgis-developer] Mac users: comments wanted on Xcode project

[Gary Sherman]

On Apr 10, 2009, at 1:53 PM, William Kyngesburye wrote:

> Well, for a while now, I've been keeping an eye on commits and  
> updating the Xcode project (in trunk/v1.1) as needed.  It's gone  
> quite smoothly, except for large commits getting filtered out of the  
> commit list so that I miss them for a while.
>
> But, except for one person that's had some trouble with it  
> (resolved) and given me a few ideas that I've implemented, the Mac  
> users and developers have been pretty quiet.  Have the Mac folk  
> tried using the Xcode project to build Qgis?  I would like to hear  
> some feedback.  Some things in particular to think about:
Funny you should ask---I tried it today and had trouble that was  
resolved by starting with a clean (checked out) source tree. I found  
that editing a .ui file and doing a build didn't pick up the changes.  
A clean was required first.
>
>
> - Does the configuration make sense?  Is it simple enough to not  
> scare people away?  It's a manual configure by editing a text file,  
> though out of the box it should work with my frameworks and a few  
> standard extras without any config edits.
It would make sense if I had a clue :) I'm afraid I still don't know  
my way around the source and target folders very well.
>
>
> The current configuration also does not verify dependencies.  But  
> for many cases, this is unnecessary, like system libraries, because  
> it's not trying to understand many very different systems, only  
> OSX.  If something isn't found where expected or configured, you  
> won't find out until the build fails.
>
> A configure script is on my list of things to look into.  Maybe it's  
> possible to hook into the cmake configuration, that would be nice...
>
> - Most optional features are requirements in the Xcode project due  
> to the lack of conditional sources (for things where a complete  
> source file is added to core or gui components).  Plugins are  
> optional in a manual fashion - select the target and build.  Source  
> fragments are conditional in the usual #ifdef manner.  This could be  
> used to wrap optional sources into an #ifdef + #include, if there is  
> interest in having the same configurability as the cmake build, but  
> I'm not sure it would work for moc sources.
>
> - Debugging - has anyone tried debugging Qgis from the Xcode GUI?  I  
> don't know much about it, though I did debug a program once in Xcode  
> (or, I successfully started the debugging process, but didn't  
> understand the output enough to track down the problem).
Yes I tried this today. The only problem was I don't seem to have the  
debug libraries for Qt so it wasn't all that helpful for the task at  
hand. Otherwise I think it will be quite useful.

>
>
> - Bundling - I've tested bundling of dependencies in the default  
> framework-based configuration + a couple libraries where needed.  I  
> haven't tried an all-in-one bundling of only libraries, like Tom's  
> build.  It should work.  It's even possible to bundle frameworks  
> (other than the Qt frameworks, which are always bundled) for a  
> framework-based all-in-one, but I haven't had a chance to test this.
>
> There is also an option to bundle extra non-Qgis files.  This was  
> necessary for a PyQt addon (Qwt5) needed for a plugin.  I found that  
> this PyQt addon (possibly others) must be in the PyQt namespace,  
> thus must be bundled with PyQt in Qgis.  This is unfortunate as it  
> goes against OSX conventions that addons/plugins/... should not be  
> added to an application package as a separate installation, but  
> instead be installed in a known plugin location for the app (Qgis  
> python plugins do this, of course).  So, in this case, you couldn't  
> add a plugin based on Qwt5 to a standard distributed Qgis app.
>
Overall I find the Xcode project useful and worth continuing. Thanks  
for all the hard work.

-gary

> -----
> William Kyngesburye <kyngchaos*at*kyngchaos*dot*com>
> http://www.kyngchaos.com/
>
> All generalizations are dangerous, even this one.
>
>
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Gary Sherman
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