What is a better IDE for QT
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I'm using Qt Creator. In some cases, especially when using an external library, debugging or finding the cause of a crash becomes impossible. I've tried using Visual Studio but haven't been very successful. Which IDE do you think is more professional, and why?
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What do you mean by debugging or finding the cause of a crash becomes impossible?
I've been using Qt Creator professionally for more than a decade and it does the job for me.
External libraries don't bring additional difficulties to me. -
As @GrecKo has just posted. And if you have tried VS "but haven't been very successful" doesn't that indicate it's probably not the IDE which is at issue? Your chosen debugger still does the debugging, and I believe you are using the same MSVC debugger in both cases?
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What do you mean by debugging or finding the cause of a crash becomes impossible?
I've been using Qt Creator professionally for more than a decade and it does the job for me.
External libraries don't bring additional difficulties to me.@GrecKo said in What is a better IDE for QT:
External libraries don't bring additional difficulties to me.
For example, I could not run Qwt on debug mode, because like that :
What I actually wanted to ask was this: Which IDE is more professional for using/adding external libraries and debugging? Which one would be more performant and meaningful for me? As you know, Visual Studio has a different project structure; does this hinder project development or sharing? I need answers to these questions. Which one is used more by percentage? Why do people prefer that IDE? I'm curious about these things. Sorry for the inconvenience.
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@GrecKo said in What is a better IDE for QT:
External libraries don't bring additional difficulties to me.
For example, I could not run Qwt on debug mode, because like that :
What I actually wanted to ask was this: Which IDE is more professional for using/adding external libraries and debugging? Which one would be more performant and meaningful for me? As you know, Visual Studio has a different project structure; does this hinder project development or sharing? I need answers to these questions. Which one is used more by percentage? Why do people prefer that IDE? I'm curious about these things. Sorry for the inconvenience.
@Joe-von-Habsburg Not sure what the picture is supposed to say.
"Which IDE is more professional for using/adding external libraries and debugging?" - if you use CMake it simply doesn't matter what IDE you use.
"Visual Studio has a different project structure; does this hinder project development or sharing?" - if you use CMake it does not matter.
"Which one is used more by percentage?" - I'm quite sure Visual Studio, but I don't have concrete numbers (and I guess others here also don't have numbers).
"Why do people prefer that IDE?" - this is the official IDE from Microsoft for Windows development. QtCreator on the other side is a smaller IDE with less functions and focused on Qt development (but not limited to Qt). But it is available for more platforms. -
@Joe-von-Habsburg Not sure what the picture is supposed to say.
"Which IDE is more professional for using/adding external libraries and debugging?" - if you use CMake it simply doesn't matter what IDE you use.
"Visual Studio has a different project structure; does this hinder project development or sharing?" - if you use CMake it does not matter.
"Which one is used more by percentage?" - I'm quite sure Visual Studio, but I don't have concrete numbers (and I guess others here also don't have numbers).
"Why do people prefer that IDE?" - this is the official IDE from Microsoft for Windows development. QtCreator on the other side is a smaller IDE with less functions and focused on Qt development (but not limited to Qt). But it is available for more platforms.@jsulm Thank you for reply :)
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I prefer Qt Creator for writing code over Visual Studio (just because I like its navigation better and because it is cross platform). With a CMake project it doesn't really matter. We still have older projects working with qmake. In this case it makes sense to create a Visual Studio project from the .pro file. It also means you need to change the .pro file instead of the VS project file (and then regenerate the VS project).
For debugging I am always switching over to Visual Studio. The debugging environment within Qt Creator is too slow for larger projects.
Especially with CMake-base projects you can also use Visual Studio Code. I have also tried CLion (now free for private projects). CLion is really nice and its debugging interface also works quite well (though I haven't used CLion for debugging on Windows, yet).
You can also use WinDbg independent of any IDE. This even provides time travel debugging. But, I think it is a lot harder to work with.
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I prefer Qt Creator for writing code over Visual Studio (just because I like its navigation better and because it is cross platform). With a CMake project it doesn't really matter. We still have older projects working with qmake. In this case it makes sense to create a Visual Studio project from the .pro file. It also means you need to change the .pro file instead of the VS project file (and then regenerate the VS project).
For debugging I am always switching over to Visual Studio. The debugging environment within Qt Creator is too slow for larger projects.
Especially with CMake-base projects you can also use Visual Studio Code. I have also tried CLion (now free for private projects). CLion is really nice and its debugging interface also works quite well (though I haven't used CLion for debugging on Windows, yet).
You can also use WinDbg independent of any IDE. This even provides time travel debugging. But, I think it is a lot harder to work with.
@SimonSchroeder Thank you so much for your reply, it was really helpful. :)
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@GrecKo said in What is a better IDE for QT:
External libraries don't bring additional difficulties to me.
For example, I could not run Qwt on debug mode, because like that :
What I actually wanted to ask was this: Which IDE is more professional for using/adding external libraries and debugging? Which one would be more performant and meaningful for me? As you know, Visual Studio has a different project structure; does this hinder project development or sharing? I need answers to these questions. Which one is used more by percentage? Why do people prefer that IDE? I'm curious about these things. Sorry for the inconvenience.
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@Joe-von-Habsburg Did you add external libs with debug build? The release build of Qwt will not provide any debug info.
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@Joe-von-Habsburg
...And was the debugger able to locate the sources for those libs?
Provided you have debug libs and sources are found you ought to be able to get as much information out whether you use Creator or VS. If perchance VS can locate the sources but Creator does not that would be very different. -
I prefer Qt Creator for writing code over Visual Studio (just because I like its navigation better and because it is cross platform). With a CMake project it doesn't really matter. We still have older projects working with qmake. In this case it makes sense to create a Visual Studio project from the .pro file. It also means you need to change the .pro file instead of the VS project file (and then regenerate the VS project).
For debugging I am always switching over to Visual Studio. The debugging environment within Qt Creator is too slow for larger projects.
Especially with CMake-base projects you can also use Visual Studio Code. I have also tried CLion (now free for private projects). CLion is really nice and its debugging interface also works quite well (though I haven't used CLion for debugging on Windows, yet).
You can also use WinDbg independent of any IDE. This even provides time travel debugging. But, I think it is a lot harder to work with.
@SimonSchroeder said in What is a better IDE for QT:
For debugging I am always switching over to Visual Studio. The debugging environment within Qt Creator is too slow for larger projects.
Could you say a few words about this, please? Why would Creator be any slower than VS? I thought Creator just provides a visual wrapper over the underlying debugger facilities? I am Linux/gdb, do you think your comment applies only under Windows Creator vs VS?
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@SimonSchroeder said in What is a better IDE for QT:
For debugging I am always switching over to Visual Studio. The debugging environment within Qt Creator is too slow for larger projects.
Could you say a few words about this, please? Why would Creator be any slower than VS? I thought Creator just provides a visual wrapper over the underlying debugger facilities? I am Linux/gdb, do you think your comment applies only under Windows Creator vs VS?
@JonB This has been a topic a couple of times on this forum. This is only with Qt Creator on Windows and it seems to be the visualizers. IIRC it has to do with some script for visualizing std::vector or something like this. In theory, it should be possible to circumvent this in Qt Creator. But, it has also been a well known problem for some time now and I believe there has already been a discussion for a solution on this forum (most likely also a bug report mentioning the corresponding post). Nothing has happened for years, so I'm not expecting it to change. This leaves us with VS for debugging as the better alternative. (For smaller projects the integrated debugging environment in Qt Creator seems to work fine. However, in many cases I cannot evaluate any expressions in Qt Creator. This is really anoying if I need to look at element 10305 of a vector, but the visualizer cannot use the index operator.)
One additional advantage of VS over Qt Creator for debugging is that I can just skip to a certain line by just clicking there without having to set a breakpoint (and then immediately removing it afterwards). This is really helpful for jumping over loops. Other IDEs also have this feature.
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@JonB This has been a topic a couple of times on this forum. This is only with Qt Creator on Windows and it seems to be the visualizers. IIRC it has to do with some script for visualizing std::vector or something like this. In theory, it should be possible to circumvent this in Qt Creator. But, it has also been a well known problem for some time now and I believe there has already been a discussion for a solution on this forum (most likely also a bug report mentioning the corresponding post). Nothing has happened for years, so I'm not expecting it to change. This leaves us with VS for debugging as the better alternative. (For smaller projects the integrated debugging environment in Qt Creator seems to work fine. However, in many cases I cannot evaluate any expressions in Qt Creator. This is really anoying if I need to look at element 10305 of a vector, but the visualizer cannot use the index operator.)
One additional advantage of VS over Qt Creator for debugging is that I can just skip to a certain line by just clicking there without having to set a breakpoint (and then immediately removing it afterwards). This is really helpful for jumping over loops. Other IDEs also have this feature.
@SimonSchroeder
Thank you, interesting. Under Linux Creator/gdb I have basically no visualizers for Qt stuff. I do not have the Qt source code installed. I agree you cannot enter even the most basic expression for evaluation, only straight variables. So I cannot view a particular e.g.QListindex, as neither.at(10)nor[10]are allowed :( But I limp through. I have always assumed this is to do with not having Qt sources, if it could be set up to work somehow instead I would love to know...?One additional advantage of VS over Qt Creator for debugging is that I can just skip to a certain line by just clicking there without having to set a breakpoint (and then immediately removing it afterwards). This is really helpful for jumping over loops. Other IDEs also have this feature.
Right-click in "breakpoint" gutter/margin to left of your code, on context menu only (no shortcut assigned) there is
Jump to line XXX, which I assume is what you mean? Otherwise there is alsoRun to line XXX, so you can either run to a line or skip everything up to a line with a single click and no breakpoint add/remove? Both of these available in Creator as in VS. -
- Run to line: Sets a temporary breakpoint on the line and stops when the program reaches this breakpoint
- Jump to ĺine: Sets the program counter to this line, skipping all instructions that are between the current program counter and the target. Use that with cause, because it changes the program flow and can have any possible side effects.
Regards
Qt has to stay free or it will die.
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- Run to line: Sets a temporary breakpoint on the line and stops when the program reaches this breakpoint
- Jump to ĺine: Sets the program counter to this line, skipping all instructions that are between the current program counter and the target. Use that with cause, because it changes the program flow and can have any possible side effects.
Regards
@aha_1980 Hi.
Not sure what/why you are telling me? I know this as I wrote, since I use them all the time! Was trying to make @SimonSchroeder aware that if he wants one of these (on re-read perhaps the Run to line) they are available in Creator debugging as they are in VS. -
QtCreator is buggy beyond imagination. Visual Studio Code needs some more setup, but long term is worth of try
@mmertama said in What is a better IDE for QT:
QtCreator is buggy beyond imagination. Visual Studio Code needs some more setup, but long term is worth of try
[cmake] CMake Error: Error: generator : Ninja
[cmake] Does not match the generator used previously: Ninja
[cmake] Either remove the CMakeCache.txt file and CMakeFiles directory or choose a different binary directory..... The second generator may have an extra space? :-o
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I'm using Qt Creator. In some cases, especially when using an external library, debugging or finding the cause of a crash becomes impossible. I've tried using Visual Studio but haven't been very successful. Which IDE do you think is more professional, and why?
@Joe-von-Habsburg For programmer not significant how ide use. I am know developer, who use nano editor and for professional education.
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@Joe-von-Habsburg For programmer not significant how ide use. I am know developer, who use nano editor and for professional education.
sudo echo "You funny :)" -
J Joe von Habsburg has marked this topic as solved
