Enginio not included in offline Qt 5.3.0 installer (linux, x86_64)
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Hi,
I just installed Qt 5.3.0 with the "Qt 5.3.0 for Linux 64-bit (442 MB)" package from the downloads page.
Everything is working nicely. I love seeing Qt evolving and improving all the time. Qt Creator is a marvel and a joy to use. But...One of the first things I tried is writing and compiling a simple project using Enginio, which has become part of my rituals with every single of the last 5.x.y releases for some time now. I just expect to have Enginio working out of the box after I install Qt with a whopping ~450Mb package. I'm aware of the existence of the Enginio source code repository. I know I can compile and install it myself from source, as I've done that many times before. But that's out of the discussion for me.
Unable to use Enginio in a Qt project, the second thing I tried was looking for updated documentation. I knew there was some in the engin.io web page. Oh.. surprise. I'm redirected. They decided to ditch the engin.io domain, now it's qtcloudservices.com.
Ok, fine. The site looks good and professional, and seems to have informative content for developers too. In this site I read that it should be possible to install Enginio using the Maintenance Tool. The next roadblock was that the Package Manager in the Maintenance Tool doesn't come with any repositories, it's a completely useless tool, unless what you want is to wipe Qt from your system. That's the only thing it does out of the box.
Next I spent some time looking for repository addresses to put in in the repositories list of the Package Manager. I found some clues scattered here and there, but nothing authoritative from Digia. A few minutes looking at what's available at "http://download.qt-project.org/online/":http://download.qt-project.org/online/. What a mess. There's no consistent structure, I'm lost here. Finally it seemed to work with a URL[1] I came up with and I see "Qt Cloud Services" in the list in Package Manager. Check, click Next and... instantly finished. Wait, it didn't download anything, didn't work. Bummer. Enough for today.
I'm moderately sure that if I keep trying at some point I might get it to work. But it shouldn't be that hard to get something as simple as a library, not any library but a library designed to work with Qt, working with Qt.
Please Digia, please:
Make Enginio (or whatever you decide to call it tomorrow) work out of the box, even with the free, non-commercial Qt SDK distribution.
The documentation needs to be improved. Obsolete documentation should disappear from the ether or be updated as soon as a Qt SDK release is available.
Maintenance tool needs to be reliable and dependable. Currently it isn't.
Also, please, FFS stop changing names arbitrarily! Way to hurt your business! As if it's not enough having to put up with APIs changing all the time.
Qt Cloud Services ain't going to succeed in this state of things. I really hope it succeeds but right now I can't be confident enough to pay a monthly bill for a Qt Cloud Services plan.
[1] http://download.qt-project.org/online/qtsdkrepository/linux_x64/desktop/qt5_53/
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The repository link you need is "http://download.qt-project.org/online/qtsdkrepository/linux_x64/root/qt/":http://download.qt-project.org/online/qtsdkrepository/linux_x64/root/qt/. The Maintenance Tool checks the "Updates.xml" file for the download links. The one you chose barely has anything in it if you check it.
Some additional info: if you need to change the download mirror, you have to download Updates.xml and qt/1.0.4* license stuff (the actual version you need is listed in the XML file) and put them in a folder. After that, change every instance of "http://download.qt-project.org" in Updates.xml with the mirror you want. It is probably a good idea change the display name as well.
Note that an offline install and an equivalent online install results in slightly different directory structures for some odd reason. I highly recommend the online one if it's not too impractical for you.