README.md

[[TOC]]

Use MdtApplication Conan packages

Below is a list of available packages for the various components of MdtApplication.

Note that only the CMakeDeps generator, and its associated tools is supported. This is mainly because the Qt package from Conan center is used, which does not support the legacy generators like cmake. For more details, see Conan and CMake.

CoreApplicationForNonQtUsage

Conanfile:

[requires]
mdtcoreapplicationfornonqtusage/x.y.z@scandyna/testing

Options:

Option	Default	Possible Values	Explanations
shared	True	[True, False]	Build as shared library

GuiApplicationForNonQtUsage

Conanfile:

[requires]
mdtguiapplicationfornonqtusage/x.y.z@scandyna/testing

Options:

Option	Default	Possible Values	Explanations
shared	True	[True, False]	Build as shared library

ConsoleApplication

Conanfile:

[requires]
mdtconsoleapplication/x.y.z@scandyna/testing

Options:

Option	Default	Possible Values	Explanations
shared	True	[True, False]	Build as shared library

CommandLineArguments

Conanfile:

[requires]
mdtcommandlinearguments/x.y.z@scandyna/testing

Options: none

Create Conan packages for MdtApplication libraries

The package version is picked up from git tag. If working on MdtApplication, go to the root of the source tree:

git tag x.y.z
conan create packaging/conan/$LIBRARY scandyna/testing --profile $CONAN_PROFILE -s build_type=$BUILD_TYPE

To create a package without having a git tag:

conan create packaging/conan/$LIBRARY x.y.z@scandyna/testing --profile $CONAN_PROFILE -s build_type=$BUILD_TYPE

Rationale

use_conan_qt option

I had put a option to use Conan packages for my projects that do not depend on Conan Qt packages.

This was because using Conan Qt was a pain.

Earlier problems

Building Conan Qt packages mostly failed, at least if Qt Widgets are required.

I didn't find a Conan package registry that accepts big packages like Qt. Bintray (now dead), accepted some Mo, but Qt with Qt Widgets was to big. GitLab started to develop a Conan package registry, but initially only accepted 50Mo, far to less for Qt.

Earlier workaround

Using the cmake, all worked by adding dependencies to the CMAKE_PREFIX_PATH and using upstream CMake package config files.

All seemed to work, because I allways used the same Qt distribution (on my machine, on the CI).

One day, I had compile errors, thanks to Qt, that checks versions.

Current status

A lots of work has been done to the Qt Conan recipe.

It's now available on Conan center, and it build on Linux (Gcc and Clang) and on Windows with MSVC.

Currently, it does not build on Windows with Gcc (MinGW).

GitLab's Conan package registry now accepts Qt packages, which is great. Despite some bugs, like version ranges, remote query, all works fine.

Current rationale with modern Conan

Using packages from Conan center requires to use modern CMake generators, like CMakeDeps.

Now Conan generates the CMake package config files, which is more robust. But now, the earlier workaround does not work anymore.

For more details, see Conan and CMake.

Thinking about how to hack package_info() in the conanfile.py, I understood that the use_conan_qt is just a bad idea.

Either use Conan or don't.

Maybe, in the future, I would provide some debian packages, which will probably make me think more about package management.