Qt Creator

Qt Creator is a cross-platform, integrated development environment (IDE) for application developers to create applications for multiple desktop, embedded, and mobile device platforms.

The Qt Creator Manual is available at:

https://doc.qt.io/qtcreator/index.html

For an overview of the Qt Creator IDE, see:

https://doc.qt.io/qtcreator/creator-overview.html

Supported Platforms

The standalone binary packages support the following platforms:

• Windows 10 (64-bit) or later
• (K)Ubuntu Linux 22.04 (64-bit) or later
• macOS 11 or later

When you compile Qt Creator yourself, the Qt version that you build with determines the supported platforms.

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.qt.io/qtcreator-extending/coding-style.html

Compiling Qt Creator

Prerequisites:

• Qt 6.4.3 or later. The Qt version that you use to build Qt Creator defines the minimum platform versions that the result supports (Windows 10, RHEL/CentOS 8.4, Ubuntu 20.04, macOS 10.15 for Qt 6.4.3).
• Qt WebEngine module for QtWebEngine based help viewer
• On Windows:
  • MinGW with GCC 11.2 or Visual Studio 2019 or later
  • Python 3.8 or later (optional, needed for the python enabled debug helper)
  • Debugging Tools for Windows (optional, for MSVC debugging support with CDB)
• On Mac OS X: latest Xcode
• On Linux: GCC 9 or later
• LLVM/Clang 14 or later (optional, LLVM/Clang 17 is recommended. See instructions on how to get LLVM. The ClangFormat plugin uses the LLVM C++ API. Since the LLVM C++ API provides no compatibility guarantee, if later versions don't compile we don't support that version.)
• CMake
• Ninja (recommended)

The used toolchain has to be compatible with the one Qt was compiled with.

Getting Qt Creator from Git

The official mirror of the Qt Creator repository is located at https://code.qt.io/cgit/qt-creator/qt-creator.git/. Run

git clone https://code.qt.io/qt-creator/qt-creator.git

to clone the Qt Creator sources from there. This creates a checkout of the Qt Creator sources in the qt-creator/ directory of your current working directory.

Qt Creator relies on some submodules, like litehtml for displaying documentation. Get these submodules with

cd qt-creator  # switch to the sources, if you just ran git clone
git submodule update --init --recursive

Note the --recursive in this command, which fetches also submodules within submodules, and is necessary to get all the sources.

The git history contains some coding style cleanup commits, which you might want to exclude for example when running git blame. Do this by running

git config blame.ignoreRevsFile .gitignore-blame

Linux and macOS

These instructions assume that Ninja is installed and in the PATH, Qt Creator sources are located at /path/to/qtcreator_sources, Qt is installed in /path/to/Qt, and LLVM is installed in /path/to/llvm.

Note that if you install Qt via the online installer, the path to Qt must include the version number and compiler ABI. The path to the online installer content is not enough.

Note that /path/to/Qt doesn't imply the full path depth like: $USER/Qt/6.4.3/gcc_64/lib/cmake/Qt6, but only $USER/Qt/6.4.3/gcc_64.

See instructions on how to get LLVM.

mkdir qtcreator_build
cd qtcreator_build

cmake -DCMAKE_BUILD_TYPE=Debug -G Ninja "-DCMAKE_PREFIX_PATH=/path/to/Qt;/path/to/llvm" /path/to/qtcreator_sources
cmake --build .

Troubleshooting: libxcb plugin not found while using Qt libraries built locally from source

Ensure all prerequisites for building Qt are installed: https://doc.qt.io/qt-6/linux.html https://doc.qt.io/qt-6/linux-requirements.html

If they were installed before building Qt and xcb plugin is missing try reinstall them with

    sudo apt-get --reinstall <package_name>

Reset building configuration for Qt libraries at '/path/to/qt_sources'

    cmake --build . --target=clean

and remove CMakeCache.txt

    rm CMakeCache.txt

Try building Qt source again.

Windows

These instructions assume that Ninja is installed and in the PATH, Qt Creator sources are located at \path\to\qtcreator_sources, Qt is installed in \path\to\Qt, and LLVM is installed in \path\to\llvm.

Note that if you install Qt via the online installer, the path to Qt must include the version number and compiler ABI. The path to the online installer content is not enough.

Note that \path\to\Qt doesn't imply the full path depth like: c:\Qt\6.4.3\msvc2019_64\lib\cmake\Qt6, but only c:/Qt/6.4.3/msvc2019_64. The usage of slashes / is intentional, since CMake has issues with backslashes \ in CMAKE_PREFX_PATH, they are interpreted as escape codes.

See instructions on how to get LLVM.

Decide which compiler to use: MinGW or Microsoft Visual Studio.

MinGW is available via the Qt online installer, for other options see https://wiki.qt.io/MinGW. Run the commands below in a shell prompt that has <path_to_mingw>\bin in the PATH.

For Microsoft Visual C++ you can use the "Build Tools for Visual Studio". Also install the "Debugging Tools for Windows" from the Windows SDK installer. We strongly recommend using the 64-bit version and 64-bit compilers on 64-bit systems. Open the x64 Native Tools Command Prompt for VS <version> from the start menu items that were created for Visual Studio, and run the commands below in it.

md qtcreator_build
cd qtcreator_build

cmake -DCMAKE_BUILD_TYPE=Debug -G Ninja "-DCMAKE_PREFIX_PATH=/path/to/Qt;/path/to/llvm" \path\to\qtcreator_sources
cmake --build .

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

qtcreator_build\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 do this is to create a self-contained Qt Creator by installing it and installing its dependencies. See "Options" below for details.

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 installation of it. We recommend using a separate, release-built version of Qt Creator to work on a debug-built version of Qt Creator.

Alternatively, take the following template of CMakeUserPresets.json for reference. Write your own configurePreset inheriting cmake-plugin-minimal in CMakeUserPresets.json to build with IDEs (such as QtCreator, VSCode, CLion...etc) locally:

{
  "version": 4,
  "cmakeMinimumRequired": {
    "major": 3,
    "minor": 23,
    "patch": 0
  },
  "configurePresets": [
    {
      "name": "custom",
      "displayName": "custom",
      "description": "custom",
      "inherits": "cmake-plugin-minimal",
      "binaryDir": "${sourceDir}/build/${presetName}",
      "toolset": {
        "value": "v142,host=x64",
        "strategy": "external"
      },
      "architecture": {
        "value": "x64",
        "strategy": "external"
      },
      "cacheVariables": {
        "CMAKE_CXX_COMPILER": "cl.exe",
        "CMAKE_C_COMPILER": "cl.exe",
        "CMAKE_PREFIX_PATH": "c:/Qt/6.4.3/msvc2019_64"
      }
    }
  ]
}

Options

If you do not have Ninja installed and in the PATH, remove -G Ninja from the first cmake call. If you want to build in release mode, change the build type to -DCMAKE_BUILD_TYPE=Release. You can also build with release optimizations but debug information with -DCMAKE_BUILD_TYPE=RelWithDebInfo.

You can find more options in the generated CMakeCache.txt file. For instance, building of Qbs together with Qt Creator can be enabled with -DBUILD_QBS=ON.

Installation is not needed. You can run Qt Creator directly from the build directory. On Windows, make sure that your PATH environment variable points to all required DLLs, like Qt and LLVM. On Linux and macOS, the build already contains the necessary RPATHs for the dependencies.

If you want to install Qt Creator anyway, that is however possible using

cmake --install . --prefix /path/to/qtcreator_install

To create a self-contained Qt Creator installation, including all dependencies like Qt and LLVM, additionally run

cmake --install . --prefix /path/to/qtcreator_install --component Dependencies

To install development files like headers, CMake files, and .lib files on Windows, run

cmake --install . --prefix /path/to/qtcreator_install --component Devel

If you used the RelWithDebInfo configuration and want debug information to be available to the installed Qt Creator, run

cmake --install . --prefix /path/to/qtcreator_install --component DebugInfo

Perf Profiler Support

Support for the perf profiler requires the perfparser tool that is part of the Qt Creator source package, and also part of the Qt Creator Git repository in form of a submodule in src/tools/perfparser.

Compilation of perfparser requires ELF and DWARF development packages. You can either download and extract a prebuilt package from https://download.qt.io/development_releases/prebuilt/elfutils/ and add the directory to the CMAKE_PREFIX_PATH when configuring Qt Creator, or install the libdw-dev package on Debian-style Linux systems.

You can also point Qt Creator to a separate installation of perfparser by setting the PERFPROFILER_PARSER_FILEPATH environment variable to the full path to the executable.

Getting LLVM/Clang for the Clang Code Model

The Clang code model uses Clangd and the ClangFormat plugin depends on the LLVM/Clang libraries. The currently recommended LLVM/Clang version is 14.0.

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:

1. Clone LLVM/Clang and checkout a suitable branch

   git clone -b release_17.0.6-based --recursive https://code.qt.io/clang/llvm-project.git
   

2. Build and install LLVM/Clang

   mkdir build
   cd build
   

   For Linux/macOS:

   cmake \
     -D CMAKE_BUILD_TYPE=Release \
     -D LLVM_ENABLE_RTTI=ON \
     -D LLVM_ENABLE_PROJECTS="clang;clang-tools-extra" \
     -D CMAKE_INSTALL_PREFIX=<installation location> \
     ../llvm-project/llvm
   cmake --build . --target install
   

   For Windows:

   cmake ^
     -G Ninja ^
     -D CMAKE_BUILD_TYPE=Release ^
     -D LLVM_ENABLE_RTTI=ON ^
     -D LLVM_ENABLE_PROJECTS="clang;clang-tools-extra" ^
     -D CMAKE_INSTALL_PREFIX=<installation location> ^
     ..\llvm-project\llvm
   cmake --build . --target install
   

Licenses and Attributions

Qt Creator is available under commercial licenses from The Qt Company, and under the GNU General Public License version 3, annotated with The Qt Company GPL Exception 1.0. See LICENSE.GPL3-EXCEPT for the details.

For more information about the third-party components that Qt Creator includes, see the Acknowledgements section in the documentation.