[Qt-creator] Making an installer of Qt creator plugin on Windows

[Eike Ziller]

> On 3. May 2019, at 16:04, Artem Razin <artem.razin at gmail.com> wrote:
> 
> Hi Eike,
> 
>> Since “installing” a plugin in Qt Creator means to just drop some files somewhere, you probably could just ask?
> 
> Yes, but it would look a bit weird because there is some installer
> already that installs Deleaker to Visual Studio, RAD Studio, as a
> standalone application and if it suddenly asked to copy some dll to
> some location... Of course, developers are able to copy a file :) but
> if an installer copied the file it would be much better!

I meant that the installer could ask for the install location(s) of Qt Creator where it shall install the files to :)

> 
>> Another location that Qt Creator looks for _user_ specific plugins is in
>> %LOCALAPPDATA%\QtProject\qtcreator\plugins\X.Y.Z
>> where X.Y.Z is the Qt Creator version.
> 
> Just tried and indeed it works very well. Thank you for the idea.
> 
> So now an installer can just create folders X.Y.Z for all supported
> versions and place a plugin dll to each folder.
> 
> Thank you!
> 
> On Fri, May 3, 2019 at 10:05 AM Eike Ziller <Eike.Ziller at qt.io> wrote:
>> 
>> 
>> 
>>> On 2. May 2019, at 18:34, Artem Razin <artem.razin at gmail.com> wrote:
>>> 
>>> Hi,
>>> 
>>> I am really a newbie in Qt world, and unfortunately Google didn't help
>>> me this time.
>>> 
>>> Currently I am working on an installer for my plugin for Qt Creator on
>>> Windows, but I just can't find a good way to enumerate all installed
>>> Qt Creators (to copy the plugin dll to a plugin directory of each
>>> installed version).
>>> 
>>> I realized that (at least) fresh Qt builds can be found in
>>> HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Uninstall\***,
>>> so an installer could check all such entries, then check presence of
>>> qtcreator.exe in <InstallLocation>\Tools\QtCreator\bin\qtcreator.exe
>>> (<InstallLocation> is a value of "InstallLocation" in
>>> HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Uninstall\***).
>>> 
>>> Is there a better way?
>>> 
>>> Might it happen that this way will not work, i.e. probably there is
>>> another way of installing Qt Creator?
>> 
>> There are the Qt Creator-only offline installers which install to <InstallLocation>\bin\qtcreator.exe
>> And I think e.g. chocolatey has a Qt Creator package too, and possibly other “unofficial” ways.
>> 
>>> What's a common way to distribute Qt creator plugins? Just looked at
>>> qtc-cppcheck, and they just distribute a compiled dll, without an
>>> installer at all...
>> 
>> Since “installing” a plugin in Qt Creator means to just drop some files somewhere, you probably could just ask?
>> 
>> Another location that Qt Creator looks for _user_ specific plugins is in
>> %LOCALAPPDATA%\QtProject\qtcreator\plugins\X.Y.Z
>> where X.Y.Z is the Qt Creator version.
>> 
>> Which makes me aware that we should probably make it look in X.Y too nowadays, since we provide binary compatibility through patch releases since a while...
>> 
>> Br, Eike
>> 
>> --
>> Eike Ziller
>> Principal Software Engineer
>> 
>> The Qt Company GmbH
>> Rudower Chaussee 13
>> D-12489 Berlin
>> eike.ziller at qt.io
>> http://qt.io
>> Geschäftsführer: Mika Pälsi,
>> Juha Varelius, Mika Harjuaho
>> Sitz der Gesellschaft: Berlin, Registergericht: Amtsgericht Charlottenburg, HRB 144331 B
>> 
> 
> 
> -- 
> Best regards,
> Artem A. Razin

-- 
Eike Ziller
Principal Software Engineer

The Qt Company GmbH
Rudower Chaussee 13
D-12489 Berlin
eike.ziller at qt.io
http://qt.io
Geschäftsführer: Mika Pälsi,
Juha Varelius, Mika Harjuaho
Sitz der Gesellschaft: Berlin, Registergericht: Amtsgericht Charlottenburg, HRB 144331 B