[Qt-creator] Unable to configure plain C++ project in Qt Creator without Qt installed

[Tobias Hunger]

Hi Alfonso!

On 15.02.2013 02:20, Alfonso Chartier wrote:
> Thanks Tobias, that makes sense. You are indeed right: I am using
> qmake-based projects, which explains why Qt must be in the kit.

Great that we could pin down the issue.

> I'm trying to make it as painless/lightweight as possible for other
> developers to start using Qt Creator for their non-Qt projects. By the
> sounds of it, Qt Creator requires either qmake or cmake to be on the
> developer's PC in order to work.

... or autotools (experimental since 2.5), or Qbs (experimental in the 
comming 2.7) or generic projects (to build anything else, stable since 
the 1.x release).

> I'm thinking at this point that I might
> just have developers copy qmake.exe onto their PCs rather than having
> them download a 400 MB+ Qt library download. Is this a solution you
> recommend/others have adopted for similar use cases?

qmake needs infrastructure, e.g. all the files in mkspecs directory. It 
also serves two different purposes: It is a build system for 
applications as well as a tool to detect one Qt version with.

In creator we rely on that detection part: Creator will try to detect a 
Qt version by checking for the actual QtCore library to figure out which 
platforms/compilers that one needs. This test will fail for your 
proposed setup and thus the Qt version will not register properly.

You can of course leave the QtCore library into the place qmake expects 
it. You actually do not even need the full library, the first 4k or so 
are enough;-)

> On a related topic, if I do go down the route of just distributing the
> qmake.exe, will the 32-bit version that comes with Qt 5.0.1 work on a
> 64-bit Windows PC for the purposes of Qt Creator picking it up as a Qt
> version in a kit? I'm hoping so, as it'll ease distribution and I also
> don't see any pre-built versions of Qt for 64-bit Windows.

Yeap, a 32bit version should be fine (with the limitations listed above).

Best Regards,
Tobias

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Tobias Hunger, Senior Software Engineer - Digia, Qt
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