Qt Creator - Opinions and Thoughts

Question

I'm looking for some feedback from anyone that has had a chance to spend some time using Troll Tech's new IDE, Qt Creator. It's in public beta at this point, so there might not be many using it just yet. But, I think any 3rd party feedback might be useful.

Also, if you do a lot of Qt development, it would also be great to hear about what IDE you do rely on and why you think it is the best option for Qt development.

Answer 1

I'm using Visual Studio 2008 with the commercial QT integration for Visual Studio and it's the best. unfortunately I hadn't had the chance to try the Qt Creator.

Edit: QT integration is indeed not available for open source development. Atleast not legally...
Previously I've worked with QT using KDevelop, using minGW and using just Visual Studio without the integration, creating the .vcproj using qmake and using the designer to edit controls.

The integration plugin has a few advantages over most of the above:

• it contains all the features of the designer and more related features that are you don't get in the designer such as the ability to double click a widget to easily connect a signal from it to a slot in the widget's class.
• Full debugger support for all of QT's types and generic containers. this is basically an addition to VC's autoexp.dat file.
• Visually manage embedded images, much like VC's resource manager
• creates moc files automatically for classes deriving from QObject without a need to pass through qmake. infact, you don't even need to know about qmake.

Answer 2

Qt creator's aim is to make it as easier to get started with Qt, and together with other strategic steps by Nokia (like LGPLing Qt) is intended to speed up adoption of the toolkit.

Qt Creator does not compete with Eclipse or Visual Studio, though it can replace it in many scenarios. It is a lightweight IDE that on Windows also includes a full development toolchain. It has gathered an active community of developers and testers from day zero. Although the initial focus is on qmake-based projects, the idea is that it will support other tools though its plugin-based architecture.

You can take a look at some videos at the page

One of the most refreshing features is how easy it is to go "full screen" and forget you are using an IDE. Finally bear in mind that it is considered beta and you may run into the occasional segfault. All in all, I see a bright future for Qt creator.

(Disclaimer, my company created the crossplatform installer that Qt Creator uses)

Answer 3

There are a couple of utilities that let you use visual studio with the GPL version (ie without the commercial integration tools)

I don't have a more permanent link (http://www.qtcentre.org/forum/f-qt-programming-2/t-the-how-to-guide-qt4-with-visual-studio-2008-10999.html ) these handle the extra moc steps for you in VS2005/8 - hopefully the LGPL release will create the impetus for a lot more tools

EDIT -with the LGPL release of QT the Visual Studio add-in is now also available free

Answer 4

I would definitely recommend Qt creator. It's very simple at this point but also refreshing and easy to work with. Things like context sensitive help and intelligent code completion make it worth while.

Answer 5

I've use it for C++ code editor for a few hours and my first impression is Qt Creator is snappy, code complete is fast and seems to work for my limited test. I also like the clean look. I've been looking for a C++ code editor for Linux to replace GVIM, and i like what i saw in Qt Creator 1.0 so far. If they keep developing it, and make it a general IDE not just for creating Qt apps, i can see myself ditching GVIM for Qt Creator. By the way 1.1 is just released. Downloading it tonight...

Answer 6

Telling you the truth, I think It gives a great fight to the .Net GUI creating tools. If the "old" QT was better than MFC tools than the new QT creator gives a tool that is mind blowing.

But I will not use it for something else than GUI, It is too child like...

Answer 7

For me even to remotely consider Qt Creator the debugger has to be compareable to the tools Microsoft offers in Visual Studio 2010. I am aware Qt Creator is tied to GDB but thats simply not good enough to make the cut for me.

Answer 8

I'm trying out Qt Creator version 2.0.0 at the moment on Debian Squeeze. It's great to have a Visual Studio comparable IDE that is really cross-platform. I use VS at work to maintain MFC apps (among other things) & although I haven't fully explored it yet, it seems as good for native C++ as Visual Studio, debugging included. Anyway, VS only runs on Windows, so its no good to me as a GNU/Linux user

Answer 9

I'm quite fond of Qt Creator; I have been using it for over a year. I'm using it on Linux so I cannot compare it with Visual Studio and the like, but I do prefer it over KDevelop 3/Kate, which are my main points of reference. I haven't used Eclipse extensively. Here are the things I like:

• Good, quick code auto complete (Ctrl+Space)
• Fast way to access files in project. Dialog box at bottom allows you to do case-insensitive search/open for files; much better than clicking through directories.
• Ctrl+click capability allows you to click on a variable and find where it was declared. Ctrl+click on class type takes you to class declaration.
• Support for renaming variables, classes, functions
• Find usage for variables, functions. (Not perfect, has a hard time with certain template types)
• Smart indent is fairly easy to setup. (although emacs is best with smart indent IMO)
• Page margin line at 80 characters (may seem like a small thing, but big deal for me)
• Ability to check out, or at least make a file writable in the editor. (again, another small thing, but big deal for me)
• Has vi mode for people who like that sort of thing.

To be honest, I actually use Qt Creator for general source code editing; I don't do that much with actual Qt development. When I do, however, it has a nice feature that creates the associated .hh,.cc files classes when creating a .ui form, so that is a huge help.