[Qt-creator] QtCreator support for Unreal Engine 4

[Tobias Hunger]

Hi Sander,

> I was wondering if QtCreator could see some improvements in supporting
> third-party builds systems and/or integration with bigger projects. Unreal
> Engine 4 is one of the biggest game engines and, when you agree with
> their terms, you get access to the full source code. This helped quite a
> bit in supporting other platforms.

I have no plans at this time to support Unreal Engine. Contributions are of course welcome, but I don't think this is something that we should offer in the core Qt Creator. It would be a wonderful 3rd party plugin though.

> One of the weaker points with this engine is that for each platform you require
> to adapt to a another IDE or build process. Unreal uses their own build system,
> which can generate projectfiles/-solutions for various other build systems
> (e.g. CMake) and IDEs. If QtCreator could integrate better with UE4 there
> would be a single IDE that works on all platforms.

Sure, Creator is a great IDE and if Unreal sees value in having a nice cross-platform IDE, then they are free to contribute or fork or do whatever the license allows:-) I do not see why the Qt Project should do that work though.

> The official UE4 docs[1] already mention QtCreator

Nice! I was not aware of that.

> but if you take the time
> to look at the steps the integration is very weak. Changing a build target,
> variant or platform means changing the builds steps by hand. This is one
> of the reasons people often recommend CodeLite for development on
> Linux because that IDE allows you to switch target and variant by using
> the drop down menus just like you would on Visual Studio.

According to the documentation you link you should be able to switch between debug/release via creator's UI just as well, once you did the initial setup.

> Is if there is willingness to add UE4 support in QtCreator

I am willing to answer questions on build system integration into Creator, but I do not plan to work on this myself.

> or are there ways to improve the current integration?

Nothing obvious. Maybe another supported build system would work better than the half-baked .pro-file they ask you to load? I do not have UE around to test, so I don't know.

Best Regards,
Tobias

--
Tobias Hunger, Senior Software Engineer | The Qt Company
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