Single codebase for android, ios, blackberry, etc? Or multiple codebases?

trusktr

I'm debating on how to organize my git branches. Any tips?

I'm thinking to make a separate branch for each android, ios, blackberry, etc... But in that case, then there will be duplicate QML and JavaScript files in each branch and I will have to copy them from branch to branch to update each branch.

Can I keep everything in a single branch? How can I avoid having duplicate code across branches?

I'm thinking perhaps I can send the QML and JavaScript through the network, from a server, and thus have QML and JavaScript in a single branch for the server, but that would make things slower (by requiring a network).

Any ideas on how I should implement the git tracking? Will future versions of Qt make it easy to build for different platforms with a single codebase?

andre

Perhaps you can take inspiration from Qt itself here? Qt does not use separate branches. Instead, it separates out platform specific code into separate files where possible, and uses #ifdefs where needed.

trusktr

I was thinking about something like that, abstraction instead of branching. As of right now, I created a new orphaned branch for Android, and I haven't started iOS yet.

When support for both iOS and Android are officially released, and I start a new QML project in Qt Creator, can builds for Android and iOS (the iOS build would be something I could import to Xcode I'm guessing) be created from a single project? If so, that would be an indicator that abstraction might be preferred over branching.

On the other hand, if the steps for iOS involve creating a substantially different file/directory structure on Mac OSX, then that might merrit using branches instead of abstraction. In that case, perhaps assets like QML, fonts, and images could be made into a submodule required by each branch.

Any thoughts on that?

andre

There is actually work going on for that in Qt5. See the "discussion on the File Selectors API":http://lists.qt-project.org/pipermail/development/2013-March/010521.html in the development mailinglist.