[dot] New Qt Creator IDE from Qt Software

[Dot Stories]

URL: http://dot.kde.org/1225455418/

From: Richard Moore <>
Dept: meesa-do-not-know
Date: Friday 31/Oct/2008, @05:16

New Qt Creator IDE from Qt Software
===================================

   News emerged recently that Qt Software (formerly Trolltech) were
working on their first IDE for Qt, code named Project Greenhouse. Today
saw the release of the first technical preview under the name Qt Creator
[http://trolltech.com/developer/qt-creator]. The  initial release is
binary only, and under the terms of the Qt preview license, but the
final release  will be released with source code under a GPL compatible
license. The initial release is available for Linux, Mac OS X and MS
Windows.  Read on for a users review.
  
[http://trolltech.com/images/developerzone/welcome.png/image_view_fullscreen]

     The Greenhouse project began as a research project within
Trolltech. We are told that the design is entirely plugin based,
suggesting that ultimately we will have the ability to add support for
new languages, debuggers etc. The documentation suggests a plugin for
the CMake build system used by KDE is in the works. At the moment things
are a little too bare for the benefits of this approach to be readily
apparent, but it is a sensible approach to take when developing an IDE.

     Unusually for the dot, I have decided to look at the Windows
install of Qt Creator. The reason I have  chosen to do this is that I
have tried to get applications working with the open source Qt version
for Windows before with little success, it has always been more trouble
than I have time for. Hopefully  the combined Qt+IDE+Mingw package will
make this a pretty painless experience, which will bode well  for future
work on KDE on the windows platform.

     The initial download for Windows is pretty huge, over 200MB,
however since this includes the  compiler and run time environment as
well as Qt and the IDE itself that is something I can live with.  The
installer is a standard windows-style setup.exe and is pretty much idiot
proof (if rather slow).
 
[http://trolltech.com/images/developerzone/integratedhelp.png/image_view_fullscreen]

     The inital screen you see when running the IDE is very bare in
comparison to other IDEs - a basic  page with a button to get to the
getting started guide. There is a sidebar on the left with some  pretty
self-explanatory buttons and a menu bar but unusually there is no
toolbar at all, let alone  the common sight of an overwhelming
collections of icons.

     The getting started guide itself is pretty weak right now, and is
definitely alpha quality. The  switch from a very clean initial view to
the fairly ropey tutorial with a massive index of the  entire Qt
documentation on the left is jarring. Rather than cheating by reading
the docs, let's just  dive right in and write something, how hard can it
be?
 
[http://trolltech.com/images/developerzone/codecompletion.png/image_view_fullscreen]

     I will begin with the obvious - create a new project. We have a
number of choices of project type, but  let's go with a GUI application.
I note here that the dialog starts as an OK/Cancel style dialog then
seems to change to a wizard, this could do with some work. I will call
the project DotDemo. I have chosen to include the Webkit module as well
as the basic Qt modules, as these will be required for what I want this
project to do. The final screen of the wizard is for project management,
but is totally disabled and the file names are off the edge of  the
dialog - fair enough, this is alpha code.

     Now we have got a basic project, let's see if the IDE provided
shell will build on its own. Clicking  the big 'Build&Run' button on the
left brings up the build settings rather than actually building or
running, I discovered that you need to use the 'Play' arrow button there
instead. The result is a small progress bar in the sidebar saying
building. The resulting app is pretty  unimpressive, but the generated
code has built and run successfully - a good start.

     Double clicking the mainwindow.ui file in the file view brings up
the familiar sight of Designer  embedded in the IDE. Since my usual demo
is a browser, I have dragged a QWebView into the view and  added a
layout. This works as expected, and a click of the 'Play' button later I
have a working  minimal browser application. Not bad since I haven't
written any C++ yet!
 
[http://trolltech.com/images/developerzone/visualizingqstringlist.png/image_view_fullscreen]

     At the moment, Qt Creator seems to have quite a few rough edges in
the UI department and more  missing features than I can count, but this
is looking like it is something worth watching. This is  the first time
I have got the open source version of Qt on Windows to do anything
useful despite  having previously got working code from Visual C++, and
having lots of experience developing with Qt  on Linux. Qt Creator
certainly looks like it could lower the bar for Qt development on
Windows, and  if the CMake suppport mentioned in the documentation is
added then this could be a useful tool for  KDE developers.