maintainer-feedback requested: [Bug 242905] misc/qtchooser symlinks break users tools and qt5 deps

[bugzilla-noreply at freebsd.org]

Bugzilla Automation <bugzilla at FreeBSD.org> has asked kde at FreeBSD.org for
maintainer-feedback:
Bug 242905: misc/qtchooser symlinks break users tools and qt5 deps
https://bugs.freebsd.org/bugzilla/show_bug.cgi?id=242905



--- Description ---
qtchooser seems to be less than ideal model...

It installs a bunch of symlinks that confuse
users other apps/tools into thinking that the
particular symlinked binary/module exists or
may do something useful, when in fact it does not.
That causes variety of problems with those apps...
commonly configure builders detecting optional
things, etc.

Repeat:

Install qtchooser...
ls /usr/local/lib/qt?/bin
Diff that list to all the qtchooser symlinks in...
ls -l /usr/local/bin | grep qtchooser
Pick and exec any unneeded or not present app from there and see the confusion
ensue...
qmake: could not exec '/usr/local/lib/qt5/bin/qmake': No such file or directory
moc: could not exec '/usr/local/lib/qt5/bin/moc': No such file or directory
etc...


Fix options:

1) qtchooser should not install any symlinks at all.
Instead, whatever ports that want to use qtchooser should
install themselves into their respective /usr/local/lib/qt hiers,
then install their own respective symlinks to qtchooser in /usr/local/bin,
and then depend on qtchooser (now just offering its bin and config).

2) qtchooser could be deprecated from the dependency list
of all current ports since qt4 is gone... only qt5 exists.

3) Force users to manually install and maintain a bunch
of unneeded ports, dependencies, qt modules... just to
satisfy qtchooser's symlinks. This can cause more problems
when those ports get out of date, conflict, etc. This
option seems not an elegant minimal prospect.

4) The qt5 meta port should probably be made available as
a package anyway. This might make pulling in (3) above easier.

?) ?