The syncqt tool was originally designed to run at build time, as a
part of dependency chain of Qt modules. This works well unless we need
the code model of the Qt project in IDE, since Qt source code actively
uses header aliases, and creating them at build time breaks the code
model until the initial build is done. So we made syncqt the configure
time tool to not break the developer experience.
It's more likely that developers build Qt using command line or don't
need the code model before the first build. So running the tool at
configure time should be optional.
QT_SYNC_HEADERS_AT_CONFIGURE_TIME switches the "mode" of the syncqt
tool from build time tool to the configure time tool. Without the
option enabled build procedure runs all the syncing targets at build
time only. The exception are the developer builds, if the
'-developer-build' option is enabled, QT_SYNC_HEADERS_AT_CONFIGURE_TIME
is set to TRUE by default. This gives better development experience for
the developers that don't use the code model in their IDE or don't
require it before the first build is finished. Also this build time
mode is preferred for the CI or similar build procedures where code
model is not required at all.
By default, the option initialized from the
QT_INTERNAL_CONFIGURE_FROM_IDE CMake variable.
TODO: The option is forced to TRUE for the static Ninja Multi-Config
builds. See QTBUG-113974 for details.
[ChangeLog][Build System] When building Qt from sources, syncqt and Qt
header files are now created at build time, not configure time. This
should speed up the configuration step. You can set the CMake variable
QT_CONFIGURE_TIME_SYNC_HEADERS to ON to use the previous behavior,
though. The old behavior is also preserved if cmake/configure is run
from inside an IDE - Qt Creator, Visual Studio Code, and CLion are
currently detected.
Task-number: QTBUG-111163
Task-number: QTBUG-109792
Pick-to: 6.6
Change-Id: Ib61bda9546e58492be874a8591c37e100313d02c
Reviewed-by: Alexandru Croitor <alexandru.croitor@qt.io>
a8cf976ce6