[Qgis-developer] OSGEO4W vs. Mac OS X Qt version (or ~34 plugins slightly broken)

[Larry Shaffer]

Hi William,

On Thu, May 10, 2012 at 8:26 AM, William Kyngesburye
<woklist at kyngchaos.com>wrote:

> On May 9, 2012, at 12:08 PM, Larry Shaffer wrote:
>
> > During a recent audit of almost every PyQGIS plugin (casually studying
> repetitive design patterns) and helping some users on gis.stackexhange.com[0] I have come across an issue that may affect over 30 plugins (for now,
> only on Mac).
> >
> > From what I can gather, William Kyngesburye's Mac builds (and
> Unix/Linux, too?) consistently use a current, stable version of Qt, now at
> 4.8, while the OSGEO4W package is at 4.4 [1]. This hasn't been an issue
> since, I believe (and assume), the bundled Qt in Mac builds included Qt3
> support. The most recent 1.7.4 Mac version appears to have a bundled Qt
> with no Qt3 support (is this correct?).
> >
> I haven't included Qt3Support since QGIS 1.2, when the last of the Qt3
> usage was removed (I think GRASS plugin was the last holdout).
>

I'm referring to Qt4 being compiled with the legacy '-qt3support' option
(supposedly on by default [0]), not direct Qt3 support (frameworks, etc).
Recently, when there was an issue with QWebKit on 10.6, you posted a
configure line for compiling Qt4 to fix the problem [1]. I noted that you
chose the '-no-qt3support' option. Is that the same Qt you used for
bundling the recent QGIS 1.7.4-x? Had you nixed -qt3support in past builds,
or used Nokia's pre-compiled Qt4 builds with '-qt3support'?

[0] http://qt-project.org/doc/qt-4.8/configure-options.html
[1]
http://osgeo-org.1560.n6.nabble.com/OS-X-QtWebKit-problem-fixed-PyQwt-still-broken-td4513113.html#a4519323


> > This has caused many PyQGIS plugins to fail to launch on Mac, due to
> their use of a Qt3-only QAction signal of activated() in a plugin's
> initGui() method. Basically, the plugin does not launch (i.e. does
> nothing), with no error. However, for Windows users, the plugin launches
> fine, causing problems when trying to offer cross-platform support for
> plugin issues.
> >
> > Can someone else verify these findings?
> >
> > I am slightly surprised Qt3 is still supported, and think dropping its
> support sounds like a good idea, especially for QGIS version 1.8 or >, but
> certainly don't know all the details on versioning for QGIS distributions.
> I understand this may cause problems with the OSGEO4W package. (btw: Why is
> it still on Qt 4.4?)
> >
> I would assume that Qt3 usage in external plugins would require support in
> PyQt, but PyQt has never compiled a PyQt3 module for me, and I'm not sure
> if it can, or how.
>

Can you think of anything else that might have caused this issue, via
differences between your 1.7.3 and 1.7.4 builds? It may be even between the
latest 1.7.4-x builds. I can try to re-install each of the versions to find
when the issue occurs.



> > Here are the plugins I have found that use the deprecated activated()
> signal, including two core C++ [2]
>
> This is odd because those plugins then should not even compile if Qt3 is
> missing.  And spatialquery works for me without Qt3Support.  (GRASS works,
> but has its own problems)
>

The 'Hello World' plugin is the simplest for testing/exhibiting the issue
[2]. Odd that I get no launch of Spatial Query plugin, on all my 1.7.4-4
installs, but you're having success with it.

[2] http://plugins.qgis.org/plugins/HelloWorld/



> > and a ZIP archive of the particular files that I found to contain that
> signal [3]. Without a complete examination of each plugin, I am not
> entirely certain all of the signals are of QAction. I tried to include only
> those that appear to be. (Note: there may be more uses of Qt3 deprecated
> methods, etc.)
> >
> > Please correct me if I am off on my assessment of this situation, or if
> I am late to the discussion.
> >
> > [0] http://gis.stackexchange.com/a/22953/6725 ,
> http://gis.stackexchange.com/a/24860/6725
> > [1] http://trac.osgeo.org/osgeo4w/wiki/pkg-qt4-libs
> > [2]
> http://dl.dropbox.com/u/4058089/qgis/plugins_contain-qt3activated.txt
> > [3]
> http://dl.dropbox.com/u/4058089/qgis/plugins_contain-qt3activated.zip
> >
> > Regards,
> >
> > Larry Shaffer
> > Dakota Cartography
> > Black Hills, South Dakota
> > _______________________________________________
> > Qgis-developer mailing list
> > Qgis-developer at lists.osgeo.org
> > http://lists.osgeo.org/mailman/listinfo/qgis-developer
>
> -----
> William Kyngesburye <kyngchaos*at*kyngchaos*dot*com>
> http://www.kyngchaos.com/
>
> "History is an illusion caused by the passage of time, and time is an
> illusion caused by the passage of history."
>
> - Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy
>
>
>
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