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 10.11 or later

Compiling Qt Creator

Prerequisites:

• Qt 5.9.0 or later
• Qt WebEngine module for QtWebEngine based help viewer
• On Windows:
  • ActiveState Active Perl
  • MinGW with g++ 5.3 or Visual Studio 2015 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 6.0.0 or later (optional, needed for the Clang Code Model, see the section "Get LLVM/Clang for the Clang Code Model")
  • CMake (only for manual builds of LLVM/Clang)
• Python 2.6 or later (needed for building the bundled Botan library)
• 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, 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

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++ 2015 or later). For detailed information on the supported compilers, see https://wiki.qt.io/Building_Qt_5_from_Git .

1. 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.

2. 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.

3. 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\qt5.9.0-vs12, C:\work\qt5.9.0-mingw.

4. 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.

5. 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).

6. 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.

7. 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.

8. 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

9. 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 a sh.exe is found, the compile process will fail. You have to remove it from the path.

10. 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".
    • When you launch Qt Creator, activate the Clang Code Model plugin as described in doc/src/editors/creator-only/creator-clang-codemodel.qdoc.

11. 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

12. To launch Qt Creator, enter: qtcreator

13. 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.

14. 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 under lib\qtcreatorcdbext32 or lib\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 (rebuild src\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 .

15. 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 6.0.

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. 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.

If you use GCC 5 or higher on Linux, please do not use our LLVM package, but get the package for your distribution. Our LLVM package is compiled with GCC 4, so you get linking errors, because GCC 5 is using a C++ 11 conforming string implementation, which is not used by GCC 4. To sum it up, do not mix GCC 5 and GCC 4 binaries. On Ubuntu, you can download the package from http://apt.llvm.org/ with:

wget -O - http://apt.llvm.org/llvm-snapshot.gpg.key | sudo apt-key add - sudo apt-add-repository "deb http://apt.llvm.org/`lsb_release -cs/ llvm-toolchain-lsb_release -cs`-6.0 main" sudo apt-get update sudo apt-get install llvm-6.0 libclang-6.0-dev

There is a workaround to set _GLIBCXX_USE_CXX11_ABI to 1 or 0, but we recommend to download the package from http://apt.llvm.org/.

https://gcc.gnu.org/onlinedocs/libstdc++/manual/using_dual_abi.html

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:

1. Clone LLVM and checkout a suitable branch

   git clone -b release_60-based https://code.qt.io/clang/llvm
   

2. Clone Clang into llvm/tools/clang and checkout a suitable branch

   git clone -b release_60-based https://code.qt.io/clang/clang llvm/tools/clang
   

3. Build and install LLVM/Clang

   mkdir build
   cd build
   

   For Linux/macOS:

   cmake -DCMAKE_BUILD_TYPE=Release -DCMAKE_INSTALL_PREFIX=<installation location> -DLLVM_ENABLE_RTTI=ON ../llvm
   make install
   

   For Windows:

   cmake -G "NMake Makefiles JOM" -DCMAKE_BUILD_TYPE=Release -DCMAKE_INSTALL_PREFIX=<installation location> -DLLVM_ENABLE_RTTI=ON ..\llvm
   jom install
   

Third-party Components

Qt Creator includes the following third-party components, we thank the authors who made this possible:

Clazy

https://github.com/KDE/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

http://llvm.org/svn/llvm-project/llvm http://llvm.org/svn/llvm-project/cfe/trunk http://llvm.org/svn/llvm-project/clang-tools-extra/trunk

Copyright (C) 2003-2018 LLVM Team

Distributed under the University of Illinois/NCSA Open Source License (NCSA), see https://github.com/llvm-mirror/llvm/blob/master/LICENSE.TXT

With backported/additional patches from http://code.qt.io/cgit/clang/llvm.git/ http://code.qt.io/cgit/clang/clang.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 roberto.raggi@gmail.com

QtCreator/src/shared/cplusplus

Copyright 2005 Roberto Raggi roberto@kdevelop.org

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 roberto.raggi@gmail.com

QtCreator/src/tools/3rdparty/cplusplus-keywordgen

Copyright (c) 2007 Roberto Raggi roberto.raggi@gmail.com

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.

Botan, a C++ crypto library. Version 1.10.2

Botan (http://botan.randombit.net/) is distributed under these terms::

Copyright (C) 1999-2011 Jack Lloyd 2001 Peter J Jones 2004-2007 Justin Karneges 2004 Vaclav Ovsik 2005 Matthew Gregan 2005-2006 Matt Johnston 2006 Luca Piccarreta 2007 Yves Jerschow 2007-2008 FlexSecure GmbH 2007-2008 Technische Universitat Darmstadt 2007-2008 Falko Strenzke 2007-2008 Martin Doering 2007 Manuel Hartl 2007 Christoph Ludwig 2007 Patrick Sona 2010 Olivier de Gaalon All rights reserved.

Redistribution and use in source and binary forms, with or without modification, are permitted provided that the following conditions are met:

1. Redistributions of source code must retain the above copyright notice, this list of conditions, and the following disclaimer.

2. 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.

THIS SOFTWARE IS PROVIDED BY THE AUTHOR(S) "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 AUTHOR(S) OR CONTRIBUTOR(S) 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.

The source code of Botan C++ crypto library can be found in QtCreator/src/libs/3rdparty

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.