Favorite IDE/editor for Qt

[satyendra]

Can someone compare KDevelop with QtCreator.i have never used KDevelop,but i heard KDevelop has also some nice features.

[sptrakesh]

I normally develop on a Mac, and then test on Windows and Solaris. Qt Creator is about the only tool that works across all these platforms (Java IDE's NetBeans/Eclipse would work too, but they are too heavy). That said the editor features are very poor compared with MSVS especially VS 2012 (which frankly is the ultimate for C++).

[qxoz]

[quote author="sptrakesh" date="1360793058"]I normally develop on a Mac, and then test on Windows and Solaris. Qt Creator is about the only tool that works across all these platforms (Java IDE's NetBeans/Eclipse would work too, but they are too heavy).[/quote]
I like QtCreator for the same reasons. At work i have a Windows at home two kinds of linux and one Windows. When i workin on some project i don't care about OS and just start develop on same project without any changes.

[tobias.hunger]

sptrakesh: What makes MSVS better for C++ development than Creator? Which features do you miss the most? What should we improve to make it more appealing to MSVS users?

[qxoz]

Can i tell few things about code editors(Not whole IDE)?
Code collapseing is still not perfect in QtCreator, frequently its lose entry points. Only reopen a file solves problem, but all code blocks are become expanded. Somehow MSVS remember all settings even if reopen whole project. Besides i didn't find commands for collapse all and expand all in QtCreator.
Next useful thing in MSVS editor is #regions, it is very convenient.

[tobias.hunger]

I have to admit that I hardly even use code folding (except for the fold-initial-comment thing which I love!): I want to see my code at all times. There are some known issues in that area, yes:-/

Code folding is stored as part of your session, not as part of the project. That is where all the breakpoints, bookmarks and other non-project-related data is stored as well, so I think that is the best place to put it.

Expand All and Collapse All are both available. They are not bound to any key by default... you can do that in Tools>Options>Environment>Keyboard. Going through that list is always a good idea: We have a lot of functionality without any keyboard bindings.

Creator does indeed not support #regions.

Please consider to add a feature request to our bugtracker if you are missing this or something else. If enough people ask for it we might implement it;-)

[andre]

The most annoying feature of the code folding is, IMHO, that it too easy to trigger it accidentally. And if you do, and then unfold again, your cursor is no longer where it was before you folded the code...

[qxoz]

[quote author="Tobias Hunger" date="1360843035"]Expand All and Collapse All are both available.[/quote]
Thank you i was looking for this feature :)

[tobias.hunger]

Andre: You can unbind keys, too:) I actually do that to avoid accidental folding

[andre]

Keys, perhaps, but I accidentally fold by clicking on the bar in front of the editor when I want to move the cursor the beginning of a different code line and my mouse is slightly off towards the left...

[qxoz]

[quote author="Andre" date="1360843185"]your cursor is no longer where it was before[/quote]
Yes you are right, I was not paying attention to it before :)

[Serenity]

I wish, I could use Eclipse, because I used it for years, also for Qt project.
But in the last time, since Qt Conference 2012, I use Qt Creator because I wanted to use them for Qt project.

But I really miss functions (for example a good/working debugger or tabs for every open cpp/h file).

[sptrakesh]

[quote author="Tobias Hunger" date="1360838300"]sptrakesh: What makes MSVS better for C++ development than Creator? Which features do you miss the most? What should we improve to make it more appealing to MSVS users?[/quote]

A few items would be:

Code completion is very limited. Placing using directives within the function scope usually ends up with no completion support in Creator.

MSVS will usually show documentation from included header file when showing completion hint. Very useful needless to say.

MSVS IDE features generally work when working with templated code, Creator usually leaves it to the developer.

Ability to pin documents to panes. I have more of less similar layout for both Creator and MSVS. Two editor panes, one in which I view header files and the other the implementation files. Creator does not distinguish between the panes (which may also be a good feature for some), while VS keeps the open document stack separate for each pane.

That said, I must say I prefer the way creator automatically shows folders in the project view (much like Java based IDE's), while MSVS makes you create a group to represent the same

[tobias.hunger]

Serenity: The debugger works pretty well for me. Please consider to file bug reports if it does not work for you (provided you are debugging debug builds, unfortunately there is little information in release builds to show in a debugger;-).

Not having tabs is a design decision that we took very early on: We think tabs do not scale at all. We recommend to use Ctrl-Tab (popup with files in a chronologically ordered list), Ctrl-K (generic code navigation) and Alt-Left/Right (history navigation) instead. There is also a open document view available which is the closest we have to tabs;-)

sptrakesh: Using directives should not break code completion, but we do have quite some problems with templates, true. I also agree on the split-view mode, I personally do not like that too much either.

[qxoz]

Hi Tobias!
Sorry for stupid question but how add a feature request to bugtracker?

[andre]

Same as adding a bug.

[petteyg]

I've used both Qt Creator and KDevelop, and I much prefer KDevelop.

• KDevelop gives me a tab for each open file. Qt Creator does not, and that makes having lots of files open at once annoying to deal with.
• KDevelop doesn't make me manually re-run CMake after modifying CMakeLists.txt, and even has some support for automatically adding new source files to CMakeLists.txt.

My favorite IDE for Qt doesn't exist yet. I want a good C++ (and Qt) plugin for IntelliJ IDEA :)

[andre]

As was stated before: using tabs for files is not very scalable. What happens if you have 30 open source files? I think QtCreator actually used to use tabs, but I find the open files list and using ALT-tab to be more convenient than tabs. I find having to manage lots of files using tabs annoying.

[pperisin]

I like qt creator more than eclipse.

However, I do prefer eclipse tabs. It is probably true that with many files list is more appropriate, but mostly I work with small amount of files opened, and in that case tabs work better IMO.

[Serenity]

@Tobias Hunger: I am more accustomed with Eclipse than with Qt Creator because I used it before a long time ;) That's the reason, why I miss tabs, but it's not bad to have it not ( I don't know the shortcuts, thanks for that :) ).

The next thing, what I am missing is a "good" integration of subversion. I don't know, how I can create a new subversion project. I can only commit existing projects. Using Eclipse with Subclipse (Linux) or TortoiseSVN (Windows) is the only solution to use Subversion useful. The intergration in Qt Creator is nice, but not as good as with Eclipse. (e.g: I don't see in the project/filetree which file was changed since last checkout or when the last checkout was)