Difficulties getting started with Qt
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I first started using Qt circa 1999 with version 1.4.4, so the title of this post may be a bit odd. Nevertheless, I wanted to teach my son how to develop with Qt and the experience was quite painful. For me it was always fairly easy - download the packages (be it RPMs over dial-up or apt over gigabit Internet) and use the package manager to install these on Linux; or build Qt from source for QNX.
My son, to my great embarrassment, uses Windows, so we followed the instructions for getting Qt on that obscure platform. First, the OSS version is somewhat hidden, and it's not clear that whoever currently owns Qt really wants you to find it (bring back Trolltech!). Once you do, you are instructed to register for an account, download the installer and get Qt through that. The installer, by default, wants to claim most of your hard drive for Qt, and then proceeds to download the packages at the same dial-up speed I used to get RPMs for RedHat 5.0 in 1999. Only then it wasn't 100GB.
After several false attempts we managed both to trim the installed content to the bare necessities for getting started with Qt (Qt Creator and the base libraries), and also found how to start the installer with a specified mirror. But frankly if I were someone who just wanted to see whether Qt is worth it I would have given up after five minutes.Am I missing something? I sure hope I do.
--Elad
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Hi,
There several things that might come at play here:
- Mirrors have been a bit unreliable these past weeks so changing the mirror is a good thing
- For the 100Gb, you may have selected too much stuff especially to get started. Sounds you may have installed multiple versions of Qt or possibly all the extra modules like the heavy weighted WebEngine
Since the Trolltech days, Qt has grown quite a lot both in terms of features and platform support hence a higher amount of space required.
As for your son's environment, don't despair, there's WSL or even something like virtual box to help him learn the nice stuff about cross-platform and Linux development :-)
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Hi,
There several things that might come at play here:
- Mirrors have been a bit unreliable these past weeks so changing the mirror is a good thing
- For the 100Gb, you may have selected too much stuff especially to get started. Sounds you may have installed multiple versions of Qt or possibly all the extra modules like the heavy weighted WebEngine
Since the Trolltech days, Qt has grown quite a lot both in terms of features and platform support hence a higher amount of space required.
As for your son's environment, don't despair, there's WSL or even something like virtual box to help him learn the nice stuff about cross-platform and Linux development :-)
@SGaist Yes, of course we selected too much. The problem is that it was the default. Same goes with the mirror. You can work around these issues if you know what you are doing AND you are motivated enough to persevere. But that shouldn't be the first impression someone gets when trying Qt for the first time.
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@SGaist Yes, of course we selected too much. The problem is that it was the default. Same goes with the mirror. You can work around these issues if you know what you are doing AND you are motivated enough to persevere. But that shouldn't be the first impression someone gets when trying Qt for the first time.
@elahav for the mirror issue, if memory serves well, there's a task about it.
Do you remember what was selected by default ?
Interested in AI ? www.idiap.ch
Please read the Qt Code of Conduct - https://forum.qt.io/topic/113070/qt-code-of-conduct -
@elahav for the mirror issue, if memory serves well, there's a task about it.
Do you remember what was selected by default ?
@SGaist
You mean the--mirrorswitch?
Example:
maintenancetool --mirror http://ftp2.nluug.nl/languages/qtSoftware Engineer
The Qt Company, Oslo -
@SGaist
You mean the--mirrorswitch?
Example:
maintenancetool --mirror http://ftp2.nluug.nl/languages/qt@Axel-Spoerl I was thinking about making it doable directly from the UI.
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I first started using Qt circa 1999 with version 1.4.4, so the title of this post may be a bit odd. Nevertheless, I wanted to teach my son how to develop with Qt and the experience was quite painful. For me it was always fairly easy - download the packages (be it RPMs over dial-up or apt over gigabit Internet) and use the package manager to install these on Linux; or build Qt from source for QNX.
My son, to my great embarrassment, uses Windows, so we followed the instructions for getting Qt on that obscure platform. First, the OSS version is somewhat hidden, and it's not clear that whoever currently owns Qt really wants you to find it (bring back Trolltech!). Once you do, you are instructed to register for an account, download the installer and get Qt through that. The installer, by default, wants to claim most of your hard drive for Qt, and then proceeds to download the packages at the same dial-up speed I used to get RPMs for RedHat 5.0 in 1999. Only then it wasn't 100GB.
After several false attempts we managed both to trim the installed content to the bare necessities for getting started with Qt (Qt Creator and the base libraries), and also found how to start the installer with a specified mirror. But frankly if I were someone who just wanted to see whether Qt is worth it I would have given up after five minutes.Am I missing something? I sure hope I do.
--Elad
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@elahav for the mirror issue, if memory serves well, there's a task about it.
Do you remember what was selected by default ?
@SGaist I repeated the exercise, now that I know about the mirror trick (a.k.a "the one simple trick Qt owners in your area really hate"). The issue with the size of the installation seems to be that the default choice is the "custom installation" one, which, unless you prune heavily, gives you a LOT. The "Qt for desktop development" is much more reasonable, though I'm not sure what exactly it ends up installing.
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@SGaist I repeated the exercise, now that I know about the mirror trick (a.k.a "the one simple trick Qt owners in your area really hate"). The issue with the size of the installation seems to be that the default choice is the "custom installation" one, which, unless you prune heavily, gives you a LOT. The "Qt for desktop development" is much more reasonable, though I'm not sure what exactly it ends up installing.
