Qt Creator plugin development - howto
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Hello forum
I'm working on a part of project aimed to desin a behavior engine graphically. It should generate C++ code from graphical presentation of state machine. currently my teammates are working with that program to design and test behaviors. The problem is that copying and pasting generated code to existing code is error-prone. Here is a snapshot of example engine:
!http://s3.picofile.com/file/7372578709/snapshot24.jpeg(Simple run)!
Today I found "Qt Creator UML tool":http://qt-project.org/wiki/Qt_Creator_Plug-in_Gallery#418a0a6ef7a69d0dcd67044df516080c which integrates a graphical designer for class diagrams with Qt creator itself.
This gave me an idea: If we have a plugin for our Behavior Engine, then it could be integrated with Qt creator, so I simply give my teammates a plugin and ask them to install it in their Qt creators. So the can directly manage code of engine without even opening .cpp files :D
I don't know about Qt Creator plugin mechanism and development methods. need some start points and/or suggestions. Particulary I would like to know if users have to re-compile their creator to have a plugin installed or not? And how do I best start to create a plugin in Ubuntu? (special packages needed)?
Thanks in advance.
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Check an existing plugin that does something similar to what you want to do.
No, users of a plugin do not need to recompile their creator to use a new plugin. The plugin must be build with exactly the same settings used to build the creator with. This includes compiler, Qt version, etc.
I'd recommend downloading the source packages of Qt Creator and working from there. The headers needed to address functionality in the other plugins tend not to get installed.
Stop by in IRC if you have questions. #qt-creator on the freenode network.