Dependency deadlock of MacOS Monterrey, Qt Creator and Qt 6.10

iandw

I work on a MacBook Pro 13" with M2 processor, 128Gb of solid-state "disk" and MacOS Monterrey 12.7.6, which came with the machine. My current project is to port a game I wrote on KDE desktop, Qt and Linux, to make it work as a pure-Qt app on MacOS. I use Open Source Qt.

Disk space was running short, mainly due to getting Qt-with-the-lot because I accidentally ticked the wrong box when installing Qt 6.8. I need only core Qt, widget and SVG libraries. I went to clean up and install a smaller config of Qt. Then I thought (regrettably), why not go to Qt 6.10? Before Qt 6.10 installation started, MaintenanceTool required me to install Qt Creator 20, but that wiped my previous Creator (18?). Otherwise, installation of Qt 6.10 proceeded smoothly.

Now I am in a Catch 22 situation. Qt Creator 20 will not run on my version of MacOS (Monterrey). My project is halted. My choices are:
A. Upgrade my OS to MacOS Tahoe (which Apple prefers me to do),
B. Downgrade Qt Creator (to version 18?),
C. Upgrade my OS to MacOS Sequoia (stabler than Tahoe they say),
D. Upgrade Xcode from version 14 to 15 (maybe Qt 6.10 needs more).

I tend to favour B (downgrade Qt Creator), but how, in detail, do you do that? I can find the folder on the Qt Archive, but how do I go from that to a working Qt Creator 18 and remove Qt Creator 20? And do I need to go back to Qt 6.8 also? I am happy with command-line working.

iandw

P.S. Apologies, I misread and mistyped the Qt Creator version. 18.0 is actually the latest, but doesn't work for me. I don't know what version I had before. It was wiped. I have spent a few hours today (Australian Eastern time) trying various things with Qt Online Installer and MaintenanceTool, but neither of them will show Archive versions of Qt Creator, only version 18.0, the one that does not work for me.

aha_1980

Hi @iandw,

Archive Versions of Qt Creator are available at https://download.qt.io/official_releases/qtcreator/

Mostly they are compatible with a wide range of Qt versions.

I'm no Mac user so I cannot tell you which Creator version is compatible with your macOS.

Regards

J.Hilk

Monterey was released in late 2021 that would actually mean QtCreator 7 and Qt 6.2 LTS

I recommend updating macOS Xcode and QtC further.

personally I'm running 18.0.2 or beta, Tahoe26.3 and Xcode 26.2

iandw

Hello @aha_1980,

I go back to about 2001 with Qt and was a KDE Games developer until 2015. I resumed with Qt a little over a year ago on my Apple MacBook Pro M2.

I would like to install https://download.qt.io/official_releases/qtcreator/16.0 but can find no way to do that, neither with Qt Online Installer nor with MaintenanceTool.app. Both show only Qt Creator 18.0, whatever I try (Archive mode and typing the full URL into the search box).

Qt Creator 18.0 builds and installs on my versions of MacOS and Xcode, but will not run.

Any ideas? Best regards, Ian W.

aha_1980

@iandw You cannot install older versions with MaintenanceTool. You have to download an installer from https://download.qt.io/official_releases/qtcreator/16.0 and use that.

Regards

SGaist

Hi,

You might also want to consider using the aqtinstall project to manage your installation.

ziller

@iandw said in Dependency deadlock of MacOS Monterrey, Qt Creator and Qt 6.10:

Hello @aha_1980,

I go back to about 2001 with Qt and was a KDE Games developer until 2015. I resumed with Qt a little over a year ago on my Apple MacBook Pro M2.

I would like to install https://download.qt.io/official_releases/qtcreator/16.0 but can find no way to do that, neither with Qt Online Installer nor with MaintenanceTool.app. Both show only Qt Creator 18.0, whatever I try (Archive mode and typing the full URL into the search box).

Qt Creator 18.0 builds and installs on my versions of MacOS and Xcode, but will not run.

Any ideas? Best regards, Ian W.

The official Qt Creator 17 and earlier binary packages should still support macOS 12 (https://code.qt.io/cgit/qt-creator/qt-creator.git/tree/README.md?h=17.0#n15)
Download and open qt-creator-opensource-x86_64-<version>.dmg (that actually contains a universal build of Qt Creator, regardless of the name)
Drag Qt Creator to some folder like /Applications
Run it
When asked if you want to "Link to a Qt Online Installation" (or smth like that), do that and refer it to the location where installed the Qt Online Installer (usually ~/Qt . Restart Qt Creator when prompted) - that makes the new Qt Creator aware of the Qt versions that you installed there without further manual work "as if this Qt Creator was installed with the Qt Online Installer"
You can uninstall the Qt Creator 18 from the Qt Online Installer with the Qt Maintenance Tool - it is not a mandatory component.

J.Hilk

@ziller said in Dependency deadlock of MacOS Monterrey, Qt Creator and Qt 6.10:

You can uninstall the Qt Creator 18 from the Qt Online Installer with the Qt Maintenance Tool - it is not a mandatory component.

Did that change? QtCreator used to be mandatory and you had to launch the maintenance tool with --no-force-installations If you wanted to solo deinstall it

iandw

Thanks @ziller @aha_1980 @J.Hilk for your suggestions. I decided to do a full backup of my machine first. Then I realised that my project's config and current state data-files had probably been damaged when my Qt Creator got wiped by Qt Maintenance Tool. So I set about finding out how to recover those files as well as my original Qt Creator (version 15.0.0, installed Nov 2024) - from backup. Google AI was quite helpful, as long as I took its advice with a grain of salt, as I usually do. Apple's Time Machine utility was even more help, as I cherry-picked the files and folders I needed to restore.

That all went well, except that I had an obsolete 'ui_mainwindow.h' file (generated by Qt), which would not compile. I hacked my way around that and am back in business now. My app is working fine again. It is full-screen by default and does not really need a complicated KDE-style main window.