[Qt-creator] Introduction to debugger for MSVC Users / how to use nmake

[daniel.molkentin at nokia.com]

Hi Matthias,

On Nov 22, 2009, at 8:44 PM, ext Matthias Pospiech wrote:

> I am used to the debugger integratet into Visual Studio 2005, and that
> is the only debugger I ever used.
>
> First thing that I find strange is the time it take to break at a
> breakpoint. From cklicking on an Menu entry
> and the breakpoint int the signal was about 10s, moving from one  
> line to
> the next sometimes 20s.
> (compared to non-noticable delay times in VS.)

It may be a bit slower than Visual Studio, but 10-20 seconds never  
happened to me, even with projects in the size of Creator. I will  
leave the deeper diagnosis to our debugger specialists, though.

> The next thing I do no understand is how to look at variable values.  
> In
> VS I point the mouse over the variable and see the value,
> or I mark the variable and select view. In QtCreator I could not  
> find a
> single entry in the context or application menu that has
> anything to do with watching variable values.

If you hit debug, Creator switches to the Debug Mode. You can find  
what you look for in the "locals and watchers" menu. If you want mouse- 
over hints, enable "Use tooltips in main editor while debugging" from  
Options -> Debugger -> Common.

> And a different aspect: I have read that QtCreator can use nmake and  
> the
> MS debugger.
> However I could not find an entry, where I select the compiler and
> QtCreator would take care if
> the remaining setup of the Makestep.
> Is there any available documentation/introduction for this?

Since GDB only works with MinGW, and CDB only works with MSVC  
respectively, Qt Creator depends entirely on Qt here. The Qt in the  
SDK was built with GCC, so GDB is used. If you try, for instance, the  
new msvc2008 open source package released with Qt 4.6-rc1, and install  
the CDB debugging tools (32 bit, regardless of your OS bitness,  
Creator's CDB options dialog or the help will lead you to the correct  
download URL) then Creator will use CDB instead of GDB.

HTH,
   Daniel
--
Daniel Molkentin, Software Engineer,
Nokia, Qt Development Frameworks
website: http://qt.nokia.com
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