RE: [Tora-develop] Windows build, and qscintilla plans...

[John D. G. <jgw...@da...>]

=20
> The TOra was compiled with Free QT3 port for Windows (not=20
> native QT3 for Windows which is commercial). =20

Right - I believe Henrik used to use the commercial QT port.  I was
pretty close to purchasing this to do builds, actually.

> As for QScintilla, we agreed over email with its owner=20
> that compiling it with GPL version of QT on windows is fine=20
> and does not break its license.=20

Good news!

> No. Longer answer is - not in the immediate future. There are=20
> multitude of reasons - incompatibility of the C++ standard=20
> support (which makes it difficult for example to compile with=20
> some 3rd party C++ libraries like TOra on MSVC 6).=20

Really?  What features are incompatible, or is this a general rant?

That's a common misconception about compliance, but that's subject for a
whole 'nother religious war.

Standards are great.  Everyone should have one. :)

> The other=20
> is that it makes the use of standard makefiles a nightmare=20
> and I'm not going to maintain the totally different microsoft=20
> nmake makefile.=20

I'll volunteer then :)

> With MINGW there is a possibility of merging=20
> UNIX and Windows makes into one (this is not going to happen=20
> for not until we sort out the outstanding bugs). But I=20
> haven't heard of any successful attempt of using automake=20
> with  MSVC compilers yet.

Crystal Space uses a script in the Sourceforge checkin that builds an
MSVC make file - not sure of all the details, but they maintain both a
Linux make and an MSVC make on the same set of binaries.

Mind you, given it's a game engine, they are going for performance, so
quality of compiled code (i.e. speed) may be more important for them.

> One additional drawback is that upcoming free version of QT4=20
> (GPL) for Windows will only support MINGW and a building system.

What I don't understand is it's 'OK' to blow 4 digits of greenbacks on a
QT3 license, but it's not OK to blow a few hundred on MSVC.  I know MS
is the enemy and all, but still, a buck is a buck.

With Trolltech, it's not a library, it's a religion.

Will the commercial version of QT allow compiles with MSVC?

By the way, the command line MSVC 2003 compiler is now free:

http://msdn.microsoft.com/visualc/vctoolkit2003/

It seems to support template specialization now. =20

> There might be a possibility of using qmake from QT=20
> distribution but it makes even further deviation from unix=20
> build and not that easy to configure to use certain checks=20
> like in standard makefiles.

Not sure about this myself.  What checks, and what devations would Qmake
make from a Unix build?

> No offence but I don't quite understand why would you need=20
> the kernel tools to debug TOra - seems like a bit of an=20
> extreme to me.=20

Stability, of course.

> Whilst Boundschecker is a nice tool but there=20
> some opensource alternatives that can be used and it's not a=20
> "must have" tool to do debugging and TOra development.=20

The former is interesting - do you have any good links?

The latter is subjective - a number of large retail software shops
*require* a clean BC run before releasing code.

I've used the Intel compilers and Vtune before too, and they are pretty
usefull.  I currently don't have a Vtune license though.

> Btw,=20
> developing with mingw does not have to be all in command line=20
> (especially debugging - gdb can be quite user unfriendly) -=20
> you can use Eclipse CDT environment that makes developing,=20
> compiling and debugging (with it's GUI gdb wrapper) much=20
> easier.=20

Common misconception - I'm not intersted in MSVC due to the easy to use
GUI, but mainly because of the code quality, speed, and robustness.  I
used to use Watcom before this, again due to speed issues, but with
MSVC6 they made some big speed improvements so I dumped Watcom.  The
code generation is actually pretty good now but I haven't compared it to
mingw.

I mentioned VC6 vice anything newer as it's pretty cheap now and a lot
of people still seem to use it.  For compatibility reasons my work
laptop has to stay at VC6, but I have 2003 and 2005 on my home machine.

> I was compiling my TOra builds with Windows MINGW=20
> makefiles from there without any problems.

Ok, I'll check it out.

> Also, for now I am maintaining Windows parts of TOra - but=20
> hopefully when in the future we will move to=20
> autoconf/automake completely there will be no need for the=20
> specific Windows maintenance ;-))

:) I bet there's a lot of #ifdef's then ... Maybe QT lets you get away
with this.

> If you look carefully to this - whilst password does not show=20
> cursor once clicked you can type password in it.=20

Hmm .. I can validate this, but this was not the issue I ran into (4
times) yesterday.  The field couldn't be tabbed to nor characters
entered into at all until the focus was changed back and forth to it.

> > 2) If I log onto an Oracle Apps 11.5.X instance with normal=20
> credentials, then click 'Tools / Server tuning' TOra locks up=20
> and never comes back.
> > This is an issue.
>=20
> I assume that you logging in Oracle DB containing the Oracle=20
> Applications data not the Apps server itself?=20

Correct of course - the Apps server is just Apache and Forms.  Nothing
to log into with Tora.

> I have tested=20
> the new TOra build (1.3.18 + QSCintilla changes) on pretty=20
> large database (300 tables and loads of other objects like=20
> PL/SQL, views etc) of around 70GB and it works alright.=20

That's nothing - a blank apps database has >10k metadata tables
supposedly (I haven't counted). =20

TOAD handles it fine.

3-4 of our customers who are using TOAD currently have 700G databases.

> This was one of the reasons we ported it to QScintilla -=20
> please compile the lates TOra build if you need working one.=20
> Instructions are given in readme.windows file.

Ok, was working on it - this is with the current Sourceforge 'build'
posted (18 I believe).

		=3D=3D John =3D=3D