Re: [Mingw-cross-env-list] Unneeded Qt dependency

[Mark Brand]

On 06/28/2011 04:56 PM, Nikos Chantziaras wrote:
> On 06/28/2011 05:45 PM, Nikos Chantziaras wrote:
> > I am attaching a patch with the needed modifications to qt.mk and the
> > qt-test sample program.
>
> Oopsy, wrong patch.  Here is the correct one.

Hi Nikos,

Thanks for looking into this issue. I committed your changes (the 2nd 
version):

http://hg.savannah.gnu.org/hgweb/mingw-cross-env/rev/914b02f02275

but after a false start.

However, freetds still depends on iconv, so I reverted the change to 
SYBASE_LIBS:

http://hg.savannah.gnu.org/hgweb/mingw-cross-env/rev/975794bdcdcd

For the time being at least, it looks like we have to live with the 
static codec plugins hassle as you explain

> In the *.pro file:
>
>   QTPLUGIN += qcncodecs qjpcodecs qtwcodecs qkrcodecs
>
> And somewhere in the program sources:
>
>   #include <QtPlugin>
>   Q_IMPORT_PLUGIN(qcncodecs)
>   Q_IMPORT_PLUGIN(qjpcodecs)
>   Q_IMPORT_PLUGIN(qtwcodecs)
>   Q_IMPORT_PLUGIN(qkrcodecs) 

But I'm wondering about alternatives:

Maybe there is a way to make Qt to use iconv even on Windows. After all, 
many applications will have to link to iconv anyway because of other 
libraries' dependencies, such as freetds and vmime. But I don't know if 
this is practical or desirable. My guess would be neither.

Another idea is to build the text codecs directly into QtCore instead of 
as plugins. This is what we do for the common image handlers and SQL 
drivers, but there is no configuration option to build the text codecs 
this way.

I'm also wondering if these codecs are necessary for charset conversions 
that don't involve the language specific characters the codecs are named 
after.

In cases where they are not used, the codecs could be disabled 
completely. This would not be a good default in mingw-cross-env.

Any insights would be welcome.

Also, do you have a minimal example showing where a text conversion only 
works when with -no-iconv?


Mark