[Qt-creator] Ok to skip compiling Qt Creator first when building my plugin in Linux?

[Henry Skoglund]

Nice, thanks for answering!

BTW, I also now use this simplified plugin deployment on my Mac:
no need to build Qt Creator anymore, just set IDE_BUILD_TREE to my home 
directory in my plugin's .pro file (expecting Qt to be installed in 
vanilla $HOME/Qt)

One snag though (easily fixed): the script expects the target Qt 
Creator.app to be in a subdirectory named "bin" so I create an alias in 
Terminal before compiling ny plugin:
ln -s Qt bin

Rgrds Henry

P.S. This can work even on Windows, but first I need an automated way to 
create the .lib files from the Qt Creator's dlls. I tested creating a 
core.lib from core.dll:
dumpbin/exports core.dll > core.def
editing away everything but the function names and adding the title 
"EXPORTS"
lib /def:core.def /out:core.lib


On 2016-05-17 08:02, Eike Ziller wrote:
>
>> On May 15, 2016, at 07:14, Henry Skoglund <fromqt at tungware.se> wrote:
>>
>> Hi,
>>
>> when working in Qt Creator I use my homegrown plugin, built for Qt Creator in Ubuntu, OSX and Windows. It works nicely except when there's a new release of Qt Creator, then you need to download and compile/build Qt Creator (takes about 30 minutes) and then rebuild my plugin for that new version of Qt Creator.
>> At least it used to take that time, recently (when upgrading to Qt Creator 4.0) I discovered a shortcut for my Qt Creator installation in Ubuntu:
>>
>> In my plugin's .pro file, I changed the IDE_BUILD_TREE env. variable to point to my vanilla Qt Creator installation (e.g. IDE_BUILD_TREE=/home/henry/Qt/Tools/QtCreator).
>>
>> And I could build my plugin just fine, it even got placed in the correct position directly (/home/henry/Qt/Tools/QtCreator/lib/qtcreator/plugins). Restarted Qt Creator and voila, my plugin was up and running in Qt Creator 4.0 in just a few seconds, not 30 minutes of waiting for gcc.
>>
>> So, my question is, is my skipping of waiting for gcc kosher or not? I know this feat is not possible on Windows, because there Visual Studio aborts with "LINK : fatal error LNK1181: cannot open input file 'Core.lib'"
>>
>> On Windows you obviously need to compile to obtain those .lib files, but on Linux, it seems Qt Creator does not require or use .a files? And that the .so files present in ~/Qt/Tools/QtCreator/lib/qtcreator and ~/Qt/Tools/QtCreator/lib/qtcreator/plugins already have all the needed linking information for building my plugin in them?
>>
>> (Forgive my ignorance, I'm kind of Linux noob) /Rgrds Henry
>
> Correct as long as you do not rely on generated files (atm probably only app_version.h).
>
> Br, Eike
>