Qt6: Evaluate conan.io package manager from developer perspective (Vitaly)

Summary:

Brief: https://github.com/conan-io/conan 

Docs: https://docs.conan.io/en/latest 

Package center: https://bintray.com/conan/conan-center 
 
You need to install: 

1. Python3 
2. Pip 
3. Conan as a package

You need to add repositories, for example:  

conan remote add conan-bintray https://api.bintray.com/conan/bincrafters/public-conan 

 You can search libraries or inspect dependencies, but for searching you have to specify a repository, for example: 

conan search libcurl --remote=conan-bintray 

You need to create conanfile.txt with dependencies description and run “conan install”. 

CMakeLists.txt example: 

cmake_minimum_required(VERSION 3.0) 
project(CurlTst)  
 
include(${CMAKE_BINARY_DIR}/conanbuildinfo.cmake) 
conan_basic_setup() 
 
add_executable(curl_tst main.c) 
target_link_libraries(curl_tst ${CONAN_LIBS}) 

 Everything will be automatically located, linked, and set. 
 
Pros: 

• Relatively easy to install 
• Mac/Windows/Linux 
• It is possible to use pre-built artifacts as well as build dependencies 
• Handles transitive dependencies during installation 
• You need to create a separate file with dependencies description (modern and explicit approach) 
• Handles transitive dependencies on CMake level 
• CMake file itself is the way smaller 
• You don’t need to specify any of dependencies in the CMake file at all 
• Version is in the package name which makes things easier 
• The latest qt is already available, but you need to build it from source. This also means that there are already ready-to-use configuration we can look into 
• It is easy to build something missing: just add “--build smth” flag to “conan install” command 
• Package creating is relatively easy process: tools are almost perfect, and you can write any custom logic on Python 
• The documentation is solid and comprehensive 
• Big community 

Cons: 

• Python is required 
• You still need to call two phases manually: conan install (to generate all extra files, and download dependencies if they are not already downloaded), and then CMake 
• Conan creates some extra files in the build directory 
• Python knowledge are required for developing packages