Kit Wizard Description needs to be simplified.

Bug #1395533 reported by Kill Animals
6
This bug affects 1 person
Affects Status Importance Assigned to Milestone
qtcreator-plugin-ubuntu (Ubuntu)
Opinion
Wishlist
Zoltan Balogh

Bug Description

http://i.imgur.com/XJrEDhD.png
Just to preface; I am not the only one who had issues with this.

The problem:
After reading this, I still have no idea what "Kits" are exactly for, and I do not know intuitively what architecture I am supposed to be choosing. "Kits" are too vague, and need to be more explicit. "Packaging Kit" seems more apt.

For example:
"In order to create apps for the ubuntu platform, it is required to create kits"
- This is vague, and not true in the literal sense. For example; I was creating apps for ubuntu before these "Kits" came along.
- The question that comes into mind is, "Is this for packaging? I have no clue because it does not say so".

"Kits enable cross platform and cross configuration development"
- I have no idea what "Cross Configuration Development" refers to, at least not intuitively.
- I have no idea what the scope of "Cross Platform" means. Does that mean I can develop software on other platforms like mac or windows, or that I can develop for other architectures?

"Kits consist of a set of values that define one environment, such as a target device, sysroot to build against, toolchain to build with, platform specific api set, and some metadata."

- These need to be bullet pointed.
- These are perhaps a bit too technical on there own. Not everyone is familiar with "Sysroots", nor why it is important to "Build against" them, nor what the "Toolchain" references, nor what the "Platform specific API" you are talking about is, nor what specific metadata we are talking about is.

In short;
This explanation fails to tell me "Why I need this", and "What it does" in the most simple and down to earth terms.

If I need a kit to create a package, then call it "Packaging kits", and say "Packaging kits are used to install the program on a system. You need one for every architecture you plan to release the software for."

Zoltan Balogh (bzoltan)
no longer affects: qtcreator-plugin-ubuntu
Revision history for this message
Zoltan Balogh (bzoltan) wrote :

> This is vague, and not true in the literal sense. For example; I was creating apps for ubuntu before these "Kits" came along

But not with the Ubuntu SDK and not with QtCreator

> The question that comes into mind is, "Is this for packaging? I have no clue because it does not say so".

Since it does not say "it is for packaging" it is safe to assume that it is not for packaging.

> I have no idea what "Cross Configuration Development" refers to, at least not intuitively.

Cross configuration development is when you develop for a different configuration than your development environment.

> I have no idea what the scope of "Cross Platform" means. Does that mean I can develop software on other platforms like mac or windows, or that I can develop for other architectures?

Both. In the previous sentence it says "Ubuntu Platform", so in this context the platform means OS. So yes, in order to build source projects to a different platform you will need Kits.

> "Kits consist of a set of values that define one environment, such as a target device, sysroot to build against, toolchain to build
> with, platform specific api set, and some metadata."
>
> - These need to be bullet pointed.

I am not sure. The information is there. It is a dialog not a textbook. But I will check how it fits and how it is possible to format that label.

> These are perhaps a bit too technical on there own. Not everyone is familiar with "Sysroots", nor why it is important to "Build against" them, nor what the "Toolchain" references, nor what the "Platform specific API" you are talking about is, nor what specific metadata we are talking about is.

Yes, it is technical. The Kit is a technical term, such as toolchain and sysroots are technical terms. If a developer wants to understand application development then askubuntu, freenode and mailing lists are there.

I am not sure that a simple UI dialog should explain everything.

The text in that dialog attempts to be be both minimalistic and precise at the same time.

The Kit in the Qt and QtCreator word is what the text says. Kits define the target.

The text the developers see in the dialog comes mostly from the QtCreator upstream project -> http://qt-project.org/doc/qtcreator-3.1/creator-targets.html

Changed in qtcreator-plugin-ubuntu (Ubuntu):
status: New → Opinion
importance: Undecided → Wishlist
assignee: nobody → Zoltan Balogh (bzoltan)
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