Qt downloads and install questions
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In the download section I downloaded "Qt Libraries 4.8.4 for Windows (minGW 4.4, 317 MB) and have a few questions:
1 does this include the minGW C++ compiler in the library and will it be installed along with the Qt IDE and associated tools?
2 if not then I assume I will have to search around for a minGW download site to install minGW, and the next question would be how do I link the newly installed minGW to the Qt development environment?
3 also there is mention to the QT SDK in the Qt documentation which probably refers to the complete development environment. So is this really installed when the above Qt Libraries 4.8.4 is installed , ie is this the SDK? All the links refering to the SDK seem to go to the main download site where the only choices are the Qt Libraries. -
No, and no.
Depends what IDE you are using. You can add minGW to PATH and that would work everywhere, or use Qt Creator and add your compiler there.
No. SDK was a bundle that packed Qt libraries and Qt Creator, it's not available at the moment (only in Qt5 beta 2), but will come back in glory in the near future (less than 2 months, probably).
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Well I downloaded a minGW installer, qt-win-opensource-2.6.0, and qt-creator-windows-opensource, so I guess the correct install procedure would be to install the minGW compiler, then the qt-win, and then the qt-creator, and then run the creator, a tool which I have not used before, and somehow link the minGW compiler to the Qt IDE created from the qt-win installer. Then the install should be complete and I can get around to finally learning how to use Qt4. It seems like 5 years ago I bought a QT4 book by Jasmen Blanchette which came with a CD which I used to install QT4 onto my older computer, and the installation then was quite a bit simpler especially since there was no finding a seperate compiler and such: just run an install program and that was it! The whole thing was up and running in a few minutes!
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You can switch to MSVC and it's a bit easier then, but you still have to install the compiler separately. Or you can use the Qt5 beta2 which comes with an automated SDK installer and installs everything that is needed. Or use Linux where a lot of things are easier.
The sequence you proposed is correct. Qt Creator will prbably detect the compiler and Qt libs automatically, although it's not certain. You can set up both the compiler and Qt in QtCreator->Tools->Options->Kits.
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Just one more question. Since I already have a DevC++ development environment on my laptop where I am going to install Qt4 I could probably not install minGW onto the laptop, but instead use the DevC++ compiler by selecting it from the Qt Creator. Is this correct?
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That might be true, but is not certain. Compilers are not binary compatible (on Windows. On Linux and Mac they often are), so if Qt was compiled with minGW, but you use a different compiler (or even different version in some cases), it might fail at link stage or runtime. Best thing is to try, of course. If it does not work, you need to either change the compiler, or compile Qt using the compiler you already have.
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I just found the qt-windows-opensource-5.0.0-rc1-msvc2010-32-x86 link to download the new Qt5 version which looks like a much better version than the previous beta version. Is this installer a pure windows version without having to install the minGW compiler or is this just another version just like the previous Qt4 version installer?
