I recently started using Qt library and I've got a question.
Is this possible to use Qt with Visual Studio without special add-in?
I want to just design the UI using qt designer and do the rest in VS Express.
How do I do that?
Thanks.
Yes you can, if you would prefer not to use the QtVSAddin it is very easy to use Qt with VS Express without the VS add-in and without having to do any of the uic or moc steps manually. Let QMake (installed with Qt but not part of the QtVSAddin) create your VS project file and do all your project setup in a qmake project file. Whenever you make a change like adding/removing a form or source, modify the qmake project file and regenerate the VS project. Don't modify the VS project file at all, treat it only as a temporary item. QMake will add the rules automatically to the VS project file to rerun uic and moc, you don't need to do anything if you're just modifying source code or forms.
For configuration management purposes I find this a much cleaner approach to use this workflow as you treat the VS project file as only a temporary item (they tend to diff badly and are a pain to maintain in version control).
A couple snippets to help you out:
In your qmake project file ensure you add the following line into it so that VS project files are generated when running on Windows (qmake defaults to generating a makefile).
your_qmake_proj.pro
win32: TEMPLATE = vcapp
Additionally, it's convenient to have a batch file to rerun qmake so you don't have to bring up a command prompt and set environment up (or change directory to your project in a command prompt that already has the environment setup). If you haven't set the various Qt environment variables with Windows (or prefer not to) make sure to add them to your batch file.
makevcproj.bat
set QTDIR=C:\Qt\x.y.z
set PATH=%PATH%;%QTDIR%\bin
set QMAKESPEC=win32-msvcXXXX
qmake your_qmake_proj.pro
pause
CMake is also an answer and it does work with express versions of Visual Studio. I mean if you use the Qt support in CMake you can develop Qt projects in Visual Studio (like I have done for years) without the Qt Addon. I install the addon just for the debug expansion that comes in the same package.
It is certainly possible, but without the add-in you will need to UI and MOC the needed files either before you compile the rest within VS, or through pre-compile scripting.
Specifically:
uic generates the headers from .ui files.
and
moc generates the additional implementation files for classes that has Qt macros in it.
The add-in helps you call these smoothly on the required files before compiling the rest.
It's is possible if you create the UI in QtCreator and manually setup VS in a way that generate the UI and MOC files.
But it's too much work and you can use QtCreator which is an amazing light IDE.
Related
I work in a project using Qt compiled with Visual Studio C++ compiler.
I noticed after migrating from VS2017 to VS2019 that when building the application, VS always find qrc cpp files as modified and try to rebuild them.
Is not happening for all projects though, only some unit tests.
Does someone notice this behavior?
I've had the same issues when upgrading from vc141 (2017) to vc142 (2019). It's old but the only post I found, so:
The difference in the toolkits is that in vc142 "Custom Build Tools" are now appended to include inherited values. If your project is configured to use a build tool projectwide by default (for example meta objects from QTs signal/slot), the compiler will try to do that as well when trying to rcc the qrc files, and ultimately failing without throwing an error.
Simply removing ;%(Outputs) in Properties->Custom Build Tool->General->Outputs solved it for me.
Background
I was working on a C++ project on a Windows machine, building using a makefile, and editing with Notepad++. I then decided to switch to a modern IDE, partly so that I wouldn't have to keep editing the makefile, so I installed Netbeans (first time I have used this IDE). When I created the project, I specified my existing makefile. All is well, and I can edit and build my project.
There were a couple of source files in the directory which were not mentioned in the makefile. However, they do show up in the file list in grey:
Problem
I can't for the life of me figure out how to add those grey files to the build. Do I still have to edit the makefile? Isn't the IDE supposed to manage this kind of thing?
No, Netbeans won't change your custom Makefile. If I were in your shoes, I'd start a new project and add the source files manually, and after that write any custom build steps you might require.
I have previously written a large C++ server and client project (containing multiple .cpp's and .h's which run with makefile). Now I want to modify the client to use a graphical user interface.
Should I import all of my codes to Qtcreator and compile them all in the software? How can I implement the makefile then?
Next, how can I modify my client so that the interfaction with the server is controlled from the graphical interface?
Create a Qt project (I guess, you need Qt Widgets application). Copy your existing files into project's directory. Import all these files to your project. Then look what you have to do in main() function. In Qt project it will be in the file main.cpp, and a minimal code for main() will be automatically created by Qt Creator. So, move the necessary code from your main() function there. Then bit by bit look which parts of your code will interact with Qt. Makefile will be created by Qt Creator. Files mainwindow.cpp and mainwindow.h relate to your main window's GUI.
QtCreator supports working with makefile projects. Basically it becomes a glorified text editor and directly invokes make for your project directory. Some features, like compiling a particular file might not work. See this SO question for more details. And then one can manually link/include Qt for your application's GUI.
Project configuration that is natively supported by QtCreator are qmake files. It converts directly into makefiles. This will provide the best QtCreator experience. So another option would be to convert your makefiles into qmake .pro/.pri files. This will require some effort.
I digress, but if you are going to go this way, I can also recommend CMake. QtCreator has on okay (and constantly improving) support for CMake. So do some other IDEs (CLion, VS). And you will always have the option to convert your CMake files into makefiles, Ninja files, VS solution, or even XCode project.
I'm working on a little game called freegemas, it's an open source version of the classic Bejeweled written in C++ and using gosu as the graphic API. I've been developing it under Ubuntu Linux as usual, but the other day I wanted to give it a try and I compiled it on Windows using Visual Studio 2005 (which I had never used before). The program worked flawlessly.
To compile it on Windows I manually copied all the source and header files to a new project on MSVC, but I would like to adapt the SVN so I don't have to recreate the project every time I want to compile it.
Therefore, the question would be: What's the best way of organizing the svn so I can have, on the one hand, a Makefile to compile the project in Linux, and, on the other side, the MSVC project's files? Right now I've got a simple folder called trunk with all header, source and resource files on it.
I've never used Visual Studio before, so I don't know which files are the most important either. Maybe some of those files are auto-generated and do not need to be svn-versioned.
Thanks in advance.
You could just keep the project files in a seperate directory "winbuild" or similar. Still, to maintain them would require manual interaction (ie adding every new file manually). The only files you would need to upload to svn are the *.vcproj (for MSVC 2005/2008) and *.vcxproj (MSVC 2010).
Alternatively, you could opt for a cross-platform solution like CMake, which could generate makefiles and Visual Studio project files from a common CMakeLists.txt, which is the only "project file" that would have to be maintained (instead of your makefile). Especially for a simple (?) project like yours (some headers+sources). There would be no need to include any makefiles or vcproj files at all, just the CMakelists.txt file would suffice.
There are others like CMake (SCons, boost.jam, jam, premake, etc.)
It should be feasable, but requires some testing and trial-and-error.
I have a source code for a project with their make files. I want to create a Visual Studio (2005) solution from it. Is there any direct way to do this? can anyone help me please. I spent hours for searching, but couldn't find a way to do this.
Thanks.
Unfortunately, Microsoft removed this capability after VC++ 6.
If all you're looking to do is to build a Visual Studio project from a command line or script, you can use the devenv command to build using the settings in a project.
Something like:
devenv /build debug /project myproj myapp.sln
Ans starting with VS2010, C++ projects will use the MSBuild system, so you can drive builds using that technology.
If you really want a makefile, you'll need to write it up by hand (or maybe there's some 3rd party tool out there that I'm unaware of).
I'm not sure whether this solution can help you. Which I tried and it worked well in my previous projects. It need manually add the files.
Create a blank VS solution/project. Add the source files into that project.
Mark all source files as "Excluded from building". You can right click the files in project explorer and find the setting. So now nothing will happen when you build your project.
In project setting, find something like "Custom build step". Add the commands that invoke your original build command. (You may write different build command for debug/release ). You can also set the post-build actions such to copy your result to some folder....
Now you can edit and build source files.
For my experience, I can even debug it after setting the executable.
Hope this can help you.
If this is a one-off then it is easier to just create the VS project manually in visual studio.
If you are going to need to do this often look at ceating the project in something like cmake or Qt's .pro whcihc an generate makefiles and VS build files from the same defintion.
Do you want to use the makefile to build? You can create a project from existing source in VS 2005 and setup the project to use make to build (and the wizard will take you through all of this).
I am using VS2010.In order to build you can create a project from existing code. In VS2010 you can create project from existing code File->New->Project from Existing code. You can specify the other parameters and then ready with the solution. I did not go with make file but followed this approach which is working great.