aqtinstall VS verdigris

I've used aqt[1] before but it doesn't look like it's seeing 5.15.11 yet, just 5.15.2.

[1]: https://github.com/miurahr/aqtinstall

Don't use the Qt installer. It sucks. It's only reason is to annoy people and collect your data. Use aqt: https://github.com/miurahr/aqtinstall

I mostly disagree. Like you said, Qt is the best native GUI toolkit available today. And that is a hard achievement. There are many tradeoffs (some you pointed out) but the open source community seems to find a way around those limitations. There are thousands of open source libraries you can plug-in into your Qt app to overcome many of its limitations (although some remain, like how can't we still not easily change caret/cursor color of QTextEdit??).

Unlike you, I like the direction where Qt is taking. I think QML and Qt Quick are great. I just implemented a feature in my note-taking app that turns Markdown text into Kanban board using QML and the experience has been great (https://github.com/nuttyartist/notes/pull/574). I'm planning to continue transition from QWidgets to QML/Qt Quick.

I do worry of the continuous friction with open source development and hate the online installers as well. I can recommend this useful tool https://github.com/miurahr/aqtinstall that allows you to easily download prebuilt Qt binaries. I hope they can revert their approach on that.

Install the qt binaries from the command line https://github.com/miurahr/aqtinstall

https://github.com/miurahr/aqtinstall will help you with that.

you can install it from vcpkg or conan (or https://github.com/miurahr/aqtinstall if you really want the official Qt binaries) and it'll be much less

Is there any particular reason why you want to build Qt yourself? This is usually quite painful and requires a lot of extra stuff (see https://wiki.qt.io/Building\_Qt\_6\_from\_Git) . If you just want to avoid the (horrible) official installer and a Qt account, you can use aqtinstaller to fetch everything you need: https://github.com/miurahr/aqtinstall

Just recently, I had to recompile a (singleplayer) save game editor. So basically a GUI that does some clever hex editing.

It was written in C++ using Qt.

Have you ever tried compiling a Qt program on Windows? It involves signing up for an official Qt developer account to even install qmake.

To the point I had to use an unofficial Qt installer CLI app (aqtinstall) [0] to even install the toolchain to build this little shitty app... which still relied on having several Qt .dll files in the same directory as the .exe to work.

Have you clicked on [0] yet? Well, then guess what programming language aqtinstall uses.

[0] https://github.com/miurahr/aqtinstall

This is overly dramatic. The "keywords" are just macros. If you don't want an additional preprocessor to generate code in a separate .cpp file from these macros, you can use https://github.com/woboq/verdigris

The concurrency model, object ownership and life cycle you are mentioning are not part of C++, those are just conventions in specific C++ user groups - Qt code compiles plain and simple with pretty much every conformant C++ compiler and that makes it as much C++ as anything else.

There were a couple of attempts in that direction, but i haven't really seen them used in any production codebase.

https://woboq.com/blog/verdigris-qt-without-moc.html

Is Moc for signals and slots still needed? Mind you, I haven't used Qt in 15 years, but I was sure I heard about some standard C++ way of building Qt apps without needing the MOC prebuild step (IIRC https://woboq.com/blog/verdigris-qt-without-moc.html).

Nope, Qt 6 still uses moc. I don't think modern C++ meta programming is quite capable of entirely replacing moc. The closest thing I'm aware of is [0], but it requires additional macros compared to what moc requires, and compilation speed can suffer. Chances are moc won't be dropped until full reflection lands, if ever, and even then if compilation speed is too bad I wouldn't be entirely surprised if moc remains.

[0]: https://github.com/woboq/verdigris

Verdigris

`QML_ELEMENT` support for Verdigris. https://github.com/woboq/verdigris/pull/99

> it's possible to do Qt without moc even in C++ with https://github.com/woboq/verdigris/, why wouldn't it be possible from D ?

You're talking about an entirely different thing. While OP was referring to the current state of D's ecosystem and the impact that missing key frameworks have on hindering adoption, you're arguing about the theoretical possibility of writing a framework with a language, which really does not address OP's point.

And much more importantly, MOC specifically is a code generator which has a competitor without the code generation requirement. Fully compatible even. So no, sorry "Qt is bad because MOC" stopped being an argument years ago (if it ever was).

But copperspice is not a better version: see the benchmark here: https://woboq.com/blog/verdigris-qt-without-moc.html