0.14.0: deps-archive, a prefix's files deployed, Qt's own translations, and rules-qt-xim-base

[speak-agent]

0.14.0 removes the manual steps a project still needed after building with 0.13 (Sunrisepeak/GalTranslPP#2: unzip an embedded Python, run Release.py) and cuts the Qt download to a third. Engine floor unchanged: mcpp 2026.9.26.2. No engine change is needed.

Files a program reads at run time, placed by the build. A deployed file must be one the build graph knows how to produce. So each file is first produced by an action that names it as an output (SPEC-007 R3.2), and the output is deployed: mcpp run finds it beside the program and mcpp pack carries it. The following was measured:

• a library package's deployed outputs reach the bin/ and the packed tree of every program that links it;

• a dependency's artifact actions run with the consumer's build.

• deps-archive (mcpp.deps.archive, new): unpack({archive, to}) reads a zip's central directory while the build program runs, so every member is named before anything is extracted.

  • One artifact action, mcpp-deps unpack (cmake -E tar xf --touch), extracts it and names each file as an output; each file is then deployed under to.
  • ZIP64 archives and members whose path would leave the extraction directory are refused by name.
  • A missing cmake is a warning (R1.2).
  • result::files lists the copies for a project's own layout.

• deps-vcpkg / deps-cmake options::deploy: files of the installed prefix ({"share/opencc/t2s.json", "BaseConfig/opencc"}), copied by a ${mcpp.self} stage action whose input is the installation's stamp, then deployed. prefix::deployed lists the copies.

• rules-qt translations::qt_languages: lconvert combines the catalogs of the linked modules into qt_<language>.qm under deploy_to. This is the file windeployqt writes, and it has no dependency left to resolve.

rules-qt-xim-base declares xim:qt-base (openxlings/xim-pkgindex#881, merged): qtbase, qttools, qttranslations and the QtQml library lupdate loads. The download is 56–73 MB against 187–245 MB for xim:qt. roots() uses xim:qt when a project declares both.

Criteria (.github/scripts/check-deps-and-qt.sh):

fixture	criteria
tests/archive-consumer (new)	emit extracts nothing; the program reads two members from beside itself; a C++ member that #errors is deployed as data, not compiled; a second build does not extract again; a changed archive does; the packed tree carries the files and the packed program reads them
tests/vcpkg-consumer	share/fmt/copyright deployed beside the program, and in the packed tree on Windows
tests/qt-consumer	now on rules-qt-xim-base; loads the combined qt_de.qm and prints Qt's own QProgressDialog "Cancel" as "Abbrechen"

All three were run locally against the released 2026.9.26.2, with xim:qt-base installed from the index.

Also:

• The deps modules use index loops over strings (GCC 16 fails to inline a string iterator in a module interface).
• deps-cmake lists the cmake executable among its action's inputs (R3.1).
• The README documents the Linux ABI constraint between a libc++ toolchain and vcpkg ports built against libstdc++.