[Qt] Packaging

[Den Jean]

Hi,

some Lazarus users probably would 
like that packages are available 
for the Qt4 Binding.

I normally only use a rpm based distro. 
I already do an effort by creating binaries for 
Mac and Win (platforms I do not use)

If people want to improve, they can look into 
creating a qmake project, that could normalize the 
building process and create packages.
I have other priorities than creating packages for debian.

Makefiles just serve to finally create calls to gcc,
these calls I wrote by hand (there was no qmake in qt2)
to more easily configure which Qt to use on the system. 
  - 2 different Qt's on a system: 
	The system Qt used to be a Qt3 not so long ago (Debian stable is still qt3/kde3)
        or an old unwanted Qt4 (eg Qt 4.0 and you wanted Qt 4.4) 
  - cross compiling
The makefile would just pickup the wrong one. But for distro 
packaging, the system t is ofcourse the target Qt. 
Both methods can coexist.

I would propose to store the rpm and deb packages somewhere (fpc website?),
most distros allow the addition of package sources. 
  - one for latest stable lazarus in a stable source and 
  - an often refreshed one in a testing/cooker package source

The binding source is created by scripts, with many manual steps. 
A Qt binding is actually always alot of manual work (defining 
solutions to every exception, just read the so called typedef 
system of QtJambi or a kalyptus generator. If one day I 
have too much time, I could start again from scratch,
use e.g. parts of the QtJambi project that is available now,
and publish everything. Now I do not even find
time to clean up everything and publish it or
make a nicer website. Everyone points at smoke instead of 
QtJambi, but after so many years, smoke is still
undocumented. This is one of the reasons mentioned
by PySide developers to not use smoke. I started many years ago 
when smoke info was even more scarce. 

Because a debian maintainer refuses to include the FPC Qt binding because it
is not based on smoke, I will not change it to smoke. But everyone is free to 
create one.  I guess it would be more interesting if you would spend time
in creating packages. 

regards,

Den Jean