Qt Creator
Qt Creator is a cross-platform IDE for development with the Qt framework.
Supported Platforms
The standalone binary packages support the following platforms:
- Windows 7 or later
- (K)Ubuntu Linux 16.04 (64-bit) or later
- macOS 10.12 or later
Contributing
For instructions on how to set up the Qt Creator repository to contribute patches back to Qt Creator, please check:
https://wiki.qt.io/Setting_up_Gerrit
See the following page for information about our coding standard:
https://doc-snapshots.qt.io/qtcreator-extending/coding-style.html
Compiling Qt Creator
Prerequisites:
- Qt 5.11.0 or later
- Qt WebEngine module for QtWebEngine based help viewer
- On Windows:
- ActiveState Active Perl
- MinGW with g++ 5.3 or Visual Studio 2017 or later
- jom
- Python 3.5 or later (optional, needed for the python enabled debug helper)
- On Mac OS X: latest Xcode
- On Linux: g++ 5.3 or later
- LLVM/Clang 8.0.0 or later (optional, needed for the Clang Code Model, Clang Tools, ClangFormat, Clang PCH Manager and Clang Refactoring plugins, see the section "Get LLVM/Clang for the Clang Code Model". The LLVM C++ API provides no compatibility garantee, so if later versions don't compile we don't support that version.)
- CMake (only for manual builds of LLVM/Clang)
- Qbs 1.7.x (optional, sources also contain Qbs itself)
The installed toolchains have to match the one Qt was compiled with.
You can build Qt Creator with
# Optional, needed for the Clang Code Model if llvm-config is not in PATH:
export LLVM_INSTALL_DIR=/path/to/llvm (or "set" on Windows)
# Optional, disable Clang Refactoring
export QTC_DISABLE_CLANG_REFACTORING=1
# Optional, needed to let the QbsProjectManager plugin use system Qbs:
export QBS_INSTALL_DIR=/path/to/qbs
# Optional, needed for the Python enabled dumper on Windows
set PYTHON_INSTALL_DIR=C:\path\to\python
# Optional, needed to use system KSyntaxHighlighting:
set KSYNTAXHIGHLIGHTING_LIB_DIR to folder holding the KSyntaxHighlighting library
# if automatic deducing of include folder fails set KSYNTAXHIGHLIGHTING_INCLUDE_DIR as well
# both variables can also be passed as qmake variables
cd $SOURCE_DIRECTORY
qmake -r
make (or mingw32-make or nmake or jom, depending on your platform)
Installation ("make install") is not needed. It is however possible, using
make install INSTALL_ROOT=$INSTALL_DIRECTORY
Compiling Qt and Qt Creator on Windows
This section provides step by step instructions for compiling the latest versions of Qt and Qt Creator on Windows. Alternatively, to avoid having to compile Qt yourself, you can use one of the versions of Qt shipped with the Qt SDK (release builds of Qt using MinGW and Visual C++ 2017 or later). For detailed information on the supported compilers, see https://wiki.qt.io/Building_Qt_5_from_Git .
-
Decide which compiler to use: MinGW or Microsoft Visual Studio. If you plan to contribute to Qt Creator, you should compile your changes with both compilers.
-
Install Git for Windows from https://git-for-windows.github.io/. If you plan to use the MinGW compiler suite, do not choose to put git in the default path of Windows command prompts. For more information, see step 9.
-
Create a working directory under which to check out Qt and Qt Creator, for example,
c:\work
. If you plan to use MinGW and Microsoft Visual Studio simultaneously or mix different Qt versions, we recommend creating a directory structure which reflects that. For example:C:\work\qt5.11.0-vs15, C:\work\qt5.11.0-mingw
. -
Download and install Perl from https://www.activestate.com/activeperl and check that perl.exe is added to the path. Run
perl -v
to verify that the version displayed is 5.10 or later. Note that git ships an outdated version 5.8 which cannot be used for Qt. -
In the working directory, check out the respective branch of Qt from https://code.qt.io/cgit/qt/qt5.git (we recommend the highest released version).
-
Check out Qt Creator (master branch or latest version, see https://code.qt.io/cgit/qt-creator/qt-creator.git). You should now have the directories qt and creator under your working directory.
-
Install a compiler:
-
For a MinGW toolchain for Qt, see https://wiki.qt.io/MinGW .
-
For Microsoft Visual C++, install the Windows SDK and the "Debugging Tools for Windows" from the SDK image. We strongly recommend using the 64-bit version and 64-bit compilers on 64-bit systems.
For the Visual C++ compilers, it is recommended to use the tool 'jom'. It is a replacement for nmake that utilizes all CPU cores and thus speeds up compilation significantly. Download it from https://download.qt.io/official_releases/jom and add the executable to the path.
-
-
For convenience, we recommend creating shell prompts with the correct environment. This can be done by creating a .bat-file (such as,
<working_directory>\qtvars.bat
) that contains the environment variable settings. A.bat
-file for MinGW looks like:set PATH=<path_to_qt>[qtbase]bin;<path_to_mingw>\bin;<working_directory>\creator\bin;%PATH% set QMAKESPEC=win32-g++
For the Visual C++ compilers, call the
.bat
file that sets up the environment for the compiler (provided by the Windows SDK or the compiler):CALL "C:\Program Files (x86)\Microsoft Visual Studio 14.0\VC\vcvarsall.bat" amd64 set PATH=<path_to_qt>[qtbase]bin;<working_directory>\creator\bin;%PATH% set QMAKESPEC=win32-msvc2013
You can create desktop links to the
.bat
files using the working directory and specifying%SystemRoot%\system32\cmd.exe /E:ON /V:ON /k <working_directory>\qtvars.bat
-
When using MinGW, open the shell prompt and enter:
sh.exe
That should result in a
sh is not recognized as internal or external command...
error. If ash.exe
is found, the compile process will fail. You have to remove it from the path. -
To make use of the Clang Code Model:
- Install LLVM/Clang - see the section "Get LLVM/Clang for the Clang Code Model".
- Set the environment variable LLVM_INSTALL_DIR to the LLVM/Clang installation directory if llvm-config is not in PATH.
- Before you launch Qt Creator you may prepend the PATH with the location of libclang.dll/.so that you want to be used. See more info in the section "Prebuilt LLVM/Clang packages".
-
You are now ready to configure and build Qt and Qt Creator. Please see https://wiki.qt.io/Building_Qt_5_from_Git for recommended configure-options for Qt 5. To use MinGW, open the the shell prompt and enter:
cd <path_to_qt> configure <configure_options> && mingw32-make -s cd ..\creator qmake && mingw32-make -s
To use the Visual C++ compilers, enter:
cd <path_to_qt> configure <configure_options> && jom cd ..\creator qmake && jom
-
To launch Qt Creator, enter: qtcreator
-
To test the Clang-based code model, verify that backend process bin\clangbackend.exe launches (displaying its usage).
The library libclang.dll needs to be copied to the bin directory if Clang cannot be found in the path.
-
When using Visual C++ with the "Debugging Tools for Windows" installed, the extension library
qtcreatorcdbext.dll
to be loaded into the Windows console debugger (cdb.exe
) should have been built underlib\qtcreatorcdbext32
orlib\qtcreatorcdbext64
. When using a 32 bit-build of Qt Creator with the 64 bit version of the "Debugging Tools for Windows" the library should also be built with a 64 bit compiler (rebuildsrc\libs\qtcreatorcdbext
using a 64 bit compiler).If you are building 32 bit and running on a 64 bit Windows, you can obtain the 64 bit versions of the extension library and the binary
win64interrupt.exe
, which is required for debugging from the repository https://code.qt.io/cgit/qt-creator/binary-artifacts.git/tree . -
Qt Creator can be registered as a post-mortem debugger. This can be done in the options page or by running the tool qtcdebugger with administrative privileges passing the command line options -register/unregister, respectively. Alternatively, the required registry entries
HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows NT\CurrentVersion\AeDebug HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Wow6432Node\Microsoft\Windows NT\CurrentVersion\AeDebug
can be modified using the registry editor regedt32 to contain
\qt-creator\bin\qtcdebugger %ld %ld
When using a self-built version of Qt Creator as post-mortem debugger, it needs to be able to find all dependent Qt-libraries and plugins when being launched by the system. The easiest way to provide them for Qt 5 is to run the tool windeployqt:
windeployqt -quick -qmldir share\qtcreator\welcomescreen -qmldir src\plugins\qmlprofiler bin\qtcreator.exe lib\qtcreator lib\qtcreator\plugins
Note that unlike on Unix, you cannot overwrite executables that are running. Thus, if you want to work on Qt Creator using Qt Creator, you need a separate build of it. We recommend using a separate, release-built version of Qt and Qt Creator to work on a debug-built version of Qt and Qt Creator or using shadow builds.
Get LLVM/Clang for the Clang Code Model
The Clang Code Model depends on the LLVM/Clang libraries. The currently supported LLVM/Clang version is 8.0.
Prebuilt LLVM/Clang packages
Prebuilt packages of LLVM/Clang can be downloaded from
https://download.qt.io/development_releases/prebuilt/libclang/
This should be your preferred option because you will use the version that is shipped together with Qt Creator (with backported/additional patches). In addition, MinGW packages for Windows are faster due to profile-guided optimization. If the prebuilt packages do not match your configuration, you need to build LLVM/Clang manually.
If you use the MSVC compiler to build Qt Creator the suggested way is: 1. Download both MSVC and MinGW packages of libclang. 2. Use the MSVC version of libclang during the Qt Creator build. 3. Prepend PATH variable used for the run time with the location of MinGW version of libclang.dll. 4. Launch Qt Creator.
Building LLVM/Clang manually
You need to install CMake in order to build LLVM/Clang.
Build LLVM/Clang by roughly following the instructions at http://llvm.org/docs/GettingStarted.html#git-mirror:
-
Clone LLVM/Clang and checkout a suitable branch
git clone -b release_80-based --recursive https://code.qt.io/clang/llvm-project.git
-
Build and install LLVM/Clang
mkdir build cd build
For Linux/macOS:
cmake -DCMAKE_BUILD_TYPE=Release -DLLVM_ENABLE_RTTI=ON -DLLVM_ENABLE_PROJECTS="clang;clang-tools-extra" -DCMAKE_INSTALL_PREFIX=<installation location> ../llvm-project/llvm make install
For Windows:
cmake -G "NMake Makefiles JOM" -DCMAKE_BUILD_TYPE=Release -DLLVM_ENABLE_RTTI=ON -DLLVM_ENABLE_PROJECTS="clang;clang-tools-extra" -DCMAKE_INSTALL_PREFIX=<installation location> ..\llvm-project\llvm jom install
Third-party Components
Qt Creator includes the following third-party components, we thank the authors who made this possible:
KSyntaxHighlighting
Syntax highlighting engine for Kate syntax definitions
This is a stand-alone implementation of the Kate syntax highlighting engine. It's meant as a building block for text editors as well as for simple highlighted text rendering (e.g. as HTML), supporting both integration with a custom editor as well as a ready-to-use QSyntaxHighlighter sub-class.
Distributed under the:
MIT License
Permission is hereby granted, free of charge, to any person obtaining a copy of this software and associated documentation files (the "Software"), to deal in the Software without restriction, including without limitation the rights to use, copy, modify, merge, publish, distribute, sublicense, and/or sell copies of the Software, and to permit persons to whom the Software is furnished to do so, subject to the following conditions:
The above copyright notice and this permission notice shall be included in all copies or substantial portions of the Software.
THE SOFTWARE IS PROVIDED "AS IS", WITHOUT WARRANTY OF ANY KIND, EXPRESS OR IMPLIED, INCLUDING BUT NOT LIMITED TO THE WARRANTIES OF MERCHANTABILITY, FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE AND NONINFRINGEMENT. IN NO EVENT SHALL THE AUTHORS OR COPYRIGHT HOLDERS BE LIABLE FOR ANY CLAIM, DAMAGES OR OTHER LIABILITY, WHETHER IN AN ACTION OF CONTRACT, TORT OR OTHERWISE, ARISING FROM, OUT OF OR IN CONNECTION WITH THE SOFTWARE OR THE USE OR OTHER DEALINGS IN THE SOFTWARE.
The source code of KSyntaxHighlighting can be found here: https://cgit.kde.org/syntax-highlighting.git QtCreator/src/libs/3rdparty/syntax-highlighting https://code.qt.io/cgit/qt-creator/qt-creator.git/tree/src/libs/3rdparty/syntax-highlighting
Clazy
Copyright (C) 2015-2018 Clazy Team
Distributed under GNU LIBRARY GENERAL PUBLIC LICENSE Version 2 (LGPL2).
Integrated with patches from http://code.qt.io/cgit/clang/clang-tools-extra.git/.
LLVM/Clang
https://github.com/llvm/llvm-project.git
Copyright (C) 2003-2019 LLVM Team
Distributed under the University of Illinois/NCSA Open Source License (NCSA), see https://github.com/llvm/llvm-project/blob/master/llvm/LICENSE.TXT
With backported/additional patches from https://code.qt.io/clang/llvm-project.git
Reference implementation for std::experimental::optional
https://github.com/akrzemi1/Optional
QtCreator/src/libs/3rdparty/optional
Copyright (C) 2011-2012 Andrzej Krzemienski
Distributed under the Boost Software License, Version 1.0 (see accompanying file LICENSE_1_0.txt or a copy at http://www.boost.org/LICENSE_1_0.txt)
The idea and interface is based on Boost.Optional library authored by Fernando Luis Cacciola Carballal
Implementation for std::variant
https://github.com/mpark/variant
QtCreator/src/libs/3rdparty/variant
Copyright Michael Park, 2015-2017
Distributed under the Boost Software License, Version 1.0. (See accompanying file LICENSE.md or copy at http://boost.org/LICENSE_1_0.txt)
Open Source front-end for C++ (license MIT), enhanced for use in Qt Creator
Roberto Raggi [email protected]
QtCreator/src/shared/cplusplus
Copyright 2005 Roberto Raggi [email protected]
Permission to use, copy, modify, distribute, and sell this software and its documentation for any purpose is hereby granted without fee, provided that the above copyright notice appear in all copies and that both that copyright notice and this permission notice appear in supporting documentation.
The above copyright notice and this permission notice shall be included in all copies or substantial portions of the Software.
THE SOFTWARE IS PROVIDED "AS IS", WITHOUT WARRANTY OF ANY KIND, EXPRESS OR IMPLIED, INCLUDING BUT NOT LIMITED TO THE WARRANTIES OF MERCHANTABILITY, FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE AND NONINFRINGEMENT. IN NO EVENT SHALL THE KDEVELOP TEAM BE LIABLE FOR ANY CLAIM, DAMAGES OR OTHER LIABILITY, WHETHER IN AN ACTION OF CONTRACT, TORT OR OTHERWISE, ARISING FROM, OUT OF OR IN CONNECTION WITH THE SOFTWARE OR THE USE OR OTHER DEALINGS IN THE SOFTWARE.
Open Source tool for generating C++ code that classifies keywords (license MIT)
Roberto Raggi [email protected]
QtCreator/src/tools/3rdparty/cplusplus-keywordgen
Copyright (c) 2007 Roberto Raggi [email protected]
Permission is hereby granted, free of charge, to any person obtaining a copy of this software and associated documentation files (the "Software"), to deal in the Software without restriction, including without limitation the rights to use, copy, modify, merge, publish, distribute, sublicense, and/or sell copies of the Software, and to permit persons to whom the Software is furnished to do so, subject to the following conditions:
The above copyright notice and this permission notice shall be included in all copies or substantial portions of the Software.
THE SOFTWARE IS PROVIDED "AS IS", WITHOUT WARRANTY OF ANY KIND, EXPRESS OR IMPLIED, INCLUDING BUT NOT LIMITED TO THE WARRANTIES OF MERCHANTABILITY, FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE AND NONINFRINGEMENT. IN NO EVENT SHALL THE AUTHORS OR COPYRIGHT HOLDERS BE LIABLE FOR ANY CLAIM, DAMAGES OR OTHER LIABILITY, WHETHER IN AN ACTION OF CONTRACT, TORT OR OTHERWISE, ARISING FROM, OUT OF OR IN CONNECTION WITH THE SOFTWARE OR THE USE OR OTHER DEALINGS IN THE SOFTWARE.
SQLite, in-process library that implements a SQL database engine
SQLite (https://www.sqlite.org) is in the Public Domain.
ClassView and ImageViewer plugins
Copyright (C) 2016 The Qt Company Ltd.
All rights reserved. Copyright (C) 2016 Denis Mingulov.
Contact: http://www.qt.io
This file is part of Qt Creator.
You may use this file under the terms of the BSD license as follows:
"Redistribution and use in source and binary forms, with or without modification, are permitted provided that the following conditions are met: * Redistributions of source code must retain the above copyright notice, this list of conditions and the following disclaimer. * Redistributions in binary form must reproduce the above copyright notice, this list of conditions and the following disclaimer in the documentation and/or other materials provided with the distribution. * Neither the name of The Qt Company Ltd and its Subsidiary(-ies) nor the names of its contributors may be used to endorse or promote products derived from this software without specific prior written permission.
THIS SOFTWARE IS PROVIDED BY THE COPYRIGHT HOLDERS AND CONTRIBUTORS "AS IS" AND ANY EXPRESS OR IMPLIED WARRANTIES, INCLUDING, BUT NOT LIMITED TO, THE IMPLIED WARRANTIES OF MERCHANTABILITY AND FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE ARE DISCLAIMED. IN NO EVENT SHALL THE COPYRIGHT OWNER OR CONTRIBUTORS BE LIABLE FOR ANY DIRECT, INDIRECT, INCIDENTAL, SPECIAL, EXEMPLARY, OR CONSEQUENTIAL DAMAGES (INCLUDING, BUT NOT LIMITED TO, PROCUREMENT OF SUBSTITUTE GOODS OR SERVICES; LOSS OF USE, DATA, OR PROFITS; OR BUSINESS INTERRUPTION) HOWEVER CAUSED AND ON ANY THEORY OF LIABILITY, WHETHER IN CONTRACT, STRICT LIABILITY, OR TORT (INCLUDING NEGLIGENCE OR OTHERWISE) ARISING IN ANY WAY OUT OF THE USE OF THIS SOFTWARE, EVEN IF ADVISED OF THE POSSIBILITY OF SUCH DAMAGE."
Source Code Pro font
Copyright 2010, 2012 Adobe Systems Incorporated (http://www.adobe.com/), with Reserved Font Name 'Source'. All Rights Reserved. Source is a trademark of Adobe Systems Incorporated in the United States and/or other countries.
This Font Software is licensed under the SIL Open Font License, Version 1.1.
The font and license files can be found in QtCreator/src/libs/3rdparty/fonts.