It is possible to get rid of moc by manually writing out the equivalent code (using macros or not) or gutting out features that require it. Qt uses it to do things that would otherwise not be possible, like expose QObjects to scripting languages. That requires reflection that modern C++ doesn't support and thus needs either redundancy of some kind (to generate the necessary metadata to do 'reflection') or code generation (to generate the necessary metadata to do 'reflection').

MOC was never simply superfluous.

> Getting rid of the moc was pretty much the first thing they accomplished.

but it's not a proper replacement.

With Qt's moc you just annotate the class:

    class Foo {
      Q_OBJECT
      Q_SIGNAL void f(int a, int b);
      Q_INVOKABLE void g(int c, int d);
    };

with CopperSpice (and verdigris, and anything else that does not use an external code generator) you have to repeat all the names and use much more macros:

    class Foo {
      CS_OBJECT(Foo)
      CS_SIGNAL_1(Public, void f(int a, int b));
      CS_SIGNAL_2(f, a, b);

      CS_INVOKABLE_METHOD_1(Public, void g(int c, int d));
      CS_INVOKABLE_METHOD_2(g, c, d);
    };

jcelerier and jchw basically said what I was going to say. All I have to add is that getting rid of moc in and of itself is not the end goal here; it's getting rid of moc without needing to change anything else. Until then, moc is providing something that C++ itself cannot.

See https://woboq.com/blog/verdigris-qt-without-moc.html for detailed breakdown