[Qt-creator] Correct way to start a light IDE based on Qt Creator

[Eike Ziller]

> On 11. Jan 2018, at 04:46, Seyyed Razi Alavizadeh <s.r.alavizadeh at gmail.com> wrote:
> 
> ​​
>> 
>> 2018-01-11 0:17 GMT+03:30 Tobias Hunger <tobias.hunger at gmail.com>:
>> On Wed, Jan 10, 2018 at 6:49 PM, Seyyed Razi Alavizadeh
>> <s.r.alavizadeh at gmail.com> wrote:
>> > Hi there,
>> > I want to start an IDE based on Qt Creator. But I need some advice and idea
>> > before doing anything. Some questions:
>> >
>> > 1- As there are some (maybe a lot of) my application users using Windows XP,
>> > so I need to support XP.
>> > Do I ha​​ve to start based on an old version of QtCreator supporting XP or I
>> > should forget about XP?
>> 
>> XP is unsupported by Microsoft for a long time. So no updates, no
>> security updates, no support from new compilers.
>> 
>> The latter is pretty important as Creator is using more and more C++14
>> and later features.
>> 
>> > 2- As "Qt Creator" is hard-coded everywhere. To rename qtcreator I have to
>> > change a lots of files. This will cause some problems for updating base code
>> > to latest qtcreator code.*
>> 
>> That should be configurable now in the master branch.
>> 
> ​Maybe you can point me to a file or commit?​ 

https://codereview.qt-project.org/216184

A few follow-up commits fixing some things in that situation will still be coming.

> > Which solution is better? And, what is your suggestion?
>> >      2.a - Start implementing my app based on current stable version of
>> > QtCreator and do not consider QtCreator as an upstream project. So no need
>> > to update base code.
>> >      2.b - Start implementing my app based on latest development version of
>> > QtCreator and regularly ( daily? :/ ) update base code of my application
>> > with the latest commits from QtCreator. Maybe daily update is not very
>> > practical?
>> 
>> I would use the master branch and follow Creator releases.
>> 
>> Try to keep your changes in your own plugins as much as possible and
>> contribute the rest to upstream.
>> ​​
>> Anything to keep the diff to upstream small spares you from the hassle
>> to maintain it:-)
>> 
> ​Well, what do you suggest about "doc" (and "qbs") sub-directories and also unneeded plugins?​ Removing them will complicate maintain and keeping them will complicate source-code.

It is true that you cannot configure these things away without touching at least a few files in the Qt Creator sources. But I’d advice to touch it as little as possible.
Documentation can be changed by changing the  "include(doc/doc.pri)” line in qtcreator.pro.
Plugins can be “removed” (from the build) by commenting them in src/plugins/plugins.pro.
The fewer files you manage to touch, the easier will updating it from upstream become.
If you touch too many files, you’ll be in the situation that you will basically never be able to get fixes/changes from upstream back into your project.

> 
>> > *: I would liked there was an XML file that by modifying it QtCreator was
>> > completely renamed to MY_APP name. :D
>> >
>> > 3- (somehow like 1) As I want a simple and light IDE. Is it good to start
>> > based on an old version of QtCreator (such as v2.6) that have much smaller
>> > code size than newer versions of QtCreator?
>> 
>> What do you want to do to slim things down?
>> 
> I do some checks, and I think there is no a big issue here. Indeed, in my qtcreator installation, the size of "clang" related files is 94MB of 176MB total size. So my application installed size will be ~80MB that is good. Also, my app will need 4-5 plugins enabled by default, so it should have a fast startup than QtCreator.
> 
> > Sorry for my bad English.
> 
> No worry, bad English is the standard around here:-)
> 
> ​:)​
> 
> Best Regards,
> Tobias
> 
> ​Best Regards,
> Razi​
> 
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