Qt Creator for University classrooms

sw_johannes

Hello all,
I am working at a university site. I am responsible for maintaining classroom Windows PC Pools. I know that the free (community) Qt Creator installation demands an online registration. Also, I found this: https://www.qt.io/qt-educational-license#faq
I wonder if this is the same as the community version, but anyway. What is inappropriate for me is:
How many educational licenses may I get?
Qt for Educational Programs
The educational license is personal. You can have one license per product.

Both this, and the online registration would be showstoppers for a university classroom. Why? Our university wants all PCs to join the new Microsoft EntraID, and all programs should be provided via Microsoft Intune. This makes it necessary to have an unattended installation. And in any case, we can't have a personal registration at all in our classrooms since we sometimes do not know the students (i.a. a course) in advance.
On the other hand, even if I have something like local admin rights on my institute's Pools, I do not have rights on other Pools that also would require Qt Creator.

Any pointers or help would be appreciated.

Pl45m4

@sw_johannes

Hi, you should ask the Qt Company all these questions for 100%-answers. Get in contact with them.

https://www.qt.io/contact-us

This is a user forum here :)
But I think, your university needs to apply for the Edu Program.

From what I can tell, I don't think Qt offers "volume licenses", or at least I haven't heard of it...
This is what you mean by

And in any case, we can't have a personal registration at all in our classrooms since we sometimes do not know the students (i.a. a course) in advance.

right? So you would like to have a university-wide volume license that works on multiple platforms/stations?
Every student has to apply for their own Edu license with their Edu-Mail address.

Also:
QtCreator (the IDE) is not the same as "Qt Framework".

sw_johannes

@Pl45m4

Thanks for the great information. Yes, I will contact them directly. I just have hoped that one person here happens to be in a similar position. I know about Qt != Qt Creator. I probably need both. We could dispense with the Qt lib since there is only one lab that teaches GUI programming. But it would be a pity since Qt is a great library, powerful and comparatively easy to learn, and most students seemed to like it.

SimonSchroeder

If I'm not mistaken the Edu license will give you some of the products that are otherwise only available commercially. Nothing is preventing you from using Qt Creator, Qt Designer, Qt Linguist and the Qt libraries under the GPL/LPGL even at a university. But, this will only be the community version and thus you don't get any support from Qt (but can still ask questions on this user forum).

It is true that in order to use the online installer you need a Qt account. However, with the community version there is nothing stopping you from using a single account on all university computers. If I'm not mistaken the account is only used during the installation process (not sure if when you share data with Qt it will do so with your account information, but you don't need to share data).

It is probably not very easy to automatically have the installer run when it needs an account. I assume that you'll have the exact same directory structure on all computer. This allows to install Qt on a single computer and copy it over to all other computers. In addition you might need to add some start menu entries for Qt Creator and if necessary register file associations for .cpp, .h, .ui and .pro files. It is important that Qt is copied to the exact same folder on all computers because the path is stored inside qmake (and maybe some other tools as well).

If you really don't want to use a Qt account you can get the Qt repository and compile Qt yourself. Once compiled you can copy it all other computers. (We compile Qt as a static library on Windows only once and copy it over to all the other developer machines. Works great.)

Pl45m4

@sw_johannes said in Qt Creator for University classrooms:

I know about Qt != Qt Creator. I probably need both. We could dispense with the Qt lib since there is only one lab that teaches GUI programming

So in one lab you want to actually use Qt while in other PC Pools you want only QtCreator as IDE?!
QtCreator is (has become) a great IDE, no question, but wouldn't be MS VStudio the better option for general programming courses?!

Qt is a great library, powerful and comparatively easy to learn, and most students seemed to like it.

Yes and yes, but "easy to learn" ?! From what I've heard, a lot of people are complaining or avoid Qt because it seems a little overwhelming for beginners, who already have difficulties with C++.
And even with solid C++/OOP/GUI programming knowledge, it's not that easy.

I myself got infected with the Qt virus during my computer science studies and have been with it for over 7 years now :))

If TQtC doesn't have a better/another idea, I think the best you can do is what @SimonSchroeder suggests.

cristian-adam

Qt Creator is a GPL open-source IDE for C++. You can configure a Kit without Qt to compile C++ programs.

You can install Qt Creator without the need of a Qt account via Chocolatey as:

$ choco install visualstudio2022buildtools
$ choco install windows-sdk-11-version-22H2-all
$ choco install qtcreator
$ choco install qtcreator-cdbext
$ choco install ninja
$ choco install cmake

All this is needed to have a Visual C++ compiler working with Qt Creator, including the cdb debugger, which is part of the Windows SDK.

No idea how hard it is to get Chocolatey to be used with Microsoft Intune.

The community build of Qt is being hosted on mirror brain by Universities all around the world. This means that the 7z files that contain the artifacts are available to download.

It's just a matter of knowing where to look. The aqtinstall Python module does exactly this.

You can use it to install the community Qt versions and tooling just like you would use the Qt SDK, but without a Qt account.

The Qt for Educational Programs would give you access to Qt components that are part of the Commercial offering, but for free. Like Qt for MCUs.

sw_johannes

@SimonSchroeder Thanks for your detailed answer. I consider compiling Qt (Creator) as a last resort. Even if I managed to do so (it is probably no easy stuff), I doubt that I were allowed to distribute the binary to all pools. And even if so, I probably do not want. Why? If there was a problem with my version, guess who is the person to be asked?

sw_johannes

@Pl45m4

Even if there are different Pools, there happen to be similar or even identical courses on them. It is kind of university stuff, sometimes hard to be believed or even imagined by an industry guy. ;-)

So we need consistency. I would not like the students to use VS in the first semester, and then Qt Creator in the second one.

I meant that Qt is comparatively easy to learn. I happened to program VS6 C++ / MFC in the 2000, and that was complicated and messy like hell. Not to mentioned the COM or ActiveX stuff.
No question that Qt is huge, but it works if you teach the students just some basic widgets like QButton, QTextEdit and the like, and the signal and slot stuff. Compare the latter with MFC MESSAGE_MAP and all that hell macro only stuff. And Qt is cross-platform. I also appreciate the Qt Documentation. Or what C++ GUI toolkit would you advice?
Probably https://github.com/SFML/SFML ?
Besides that: Of course, C++ itsself is complex like hell.

jsulm

@sw_johannes said in Qt Creator for University classrooms:

I doubt that I were allowed to distribute the binary to all pools

You are - QtCreator is open source software

sw_johannes

@cristian-adam Thanks for the great answer. This is very interesting. I will definitely give this a try.

Pl45m4

@sw_johannes said in Qt Creator for University classrooms:

Or what C++ GUI toolkit would you advice?

Depending on the use case Qt is one of, if not THE best solution(s). And it's more than just a GUI framework, which might be a "con" if you are looking for something lightweight.

it works if you teach the students just some basic widgets like QButton, QTextEdit and the like, and the signal and slot stuff.

Yes this is where most of the people start with Qt.

So we need consistency. I would not like the students to use VS in the first semester, and then Qt Creator in the second one.

We also had PC Pools with workstations and pre-installed software, but at some point all students were using their own laptops for GUI programming course/C++, therefore we were advised to install Qt ourselves (including our own personal community license... we did not bother about the edu benefits at all)

Besides that: Of course, C++ itsself is complex like hell.

Qt also has two excellent Python wrappers.

SimonSchroeder

@cristian-adam said in Qt Creator for University classrooms:

You can install Qt Creator without the need of a Qt account via Chocolatey as:

I have never actually thought of that. I personally have chosen to use Scoop as a package manager (https://scoop.sh). They provide Qt Creator, but not Qt directly. However, they have aqtinstall (that you have already mentioned) as an option. I have never heard of aqtinstall before. But, it seems a good way to actually install Qt without an account. Lastly, I've checked Microsoft's own package manger WinGet: Haven't found Qt there, not even Qt Creator (but somehow Qt Designer?). And they also have aqtinstall.