Re: [Plplot-devel] Is Qt5 supported?

[Alan W. I. <ir...@be...>]

On 2014-03-11 11:22-0700 Alan W. Irwin wrote:

> Therefore, my conclusion is we should wait for something like another
> year before we attempt to make PLplot work with Qt5.  There
> are several benefits to such a substantial delay.
>
> (1) A delay will allow us to bump our minimum CMake version (currently
> 2.8.9) to 2.8.11 which is currently required to take advantage of the
> latest CMake infrastructure support for finding Qt5 components.
> Typically we wait to bump that minimum version until Debian stable
> includes that minimum version of CMake as a signal that most modern
> Linux distributions are likely to carry at least that minimum version
> of CMake.  The release date of the next Debian stable version is still
> TBA, but it should roughly be a year or so from now if the Debian
> track record for the length of previous release cycles continues for
> this Debian release cycle.
>
> (2) Assuming CMake-2.8.11 constitutes the last big change in
> infrastructure support, a delay also allows the Qt5 part of the find
> methods to completely settle down to take advantage of that new
> infrastructure.
>
> (3) A delay allows the Qt5 software itself to settle down.  PLplot
> triggered a number of bugs that existed for Qt4.x before Qt4.5 was
> released, and the same type of bug issues are likely to occur for
> early Qt5.x versions as well.
>
> (4) A delay gives me a chance to get access to a well-debugged version
> of Qt5.x myself.  For example, I am likely to move to Debian testing
> (which allows Qt5 to be installed) within the next year or else that
> version will be released as the next Debian stable release. Such
> access will allow me to implement (as de facto chief maintainer for
> our build system) the build-system changes needed to allow users
> access to Qt5.
>

RM, despite all those caveats, I have changed my mind about delaying
this since I have been recently most encouraged by the helpful
comments on the CMake mailing list concerning finding Qt5.  So later
today I will try to implement an experimental option for the PLplot
build system so that it will be able to find Qt5.  Of course, it will
all be blind development on my part since I don't currently have
access to Qt5, but it turns out finding Qt5 is actually pretty simple
so there is a reasonable chance this experimental option will work for you
immediately or after one iteration when I deal with any build-system
issues that you find with Qt5.

Once that build-system option works for you, it should allow you to
see whether there are any API changes between Qt4 and Qt5 that you
have to be concerned with.

So stay tuned.

Alan
__________________________
Alan W. Irwin

Astronomical research affiliation with Department of Physics and Astronomy,
University of Victoria (astrowww.phys.uvic.ca).

Programming affiliations with the FreeEOS equation-of-state
implementation for stellar interiors (freeeos.sf.net); the Time
Ephemerides project (timeephem.sf.net); PLplot scientific plotting
software package (plplot.sf.net); the libLASi project
(unifont.org/lasi); the Loads of Linux Links project (loll.sf.net);
and the Linux Brochure Project (lbproject.sf.net).
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Linux-powered Science
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