- Qt Creator Manual
- IDE Overview
- Qt Creator Manual 10.0.0-beta2

Getting Started ◦ User Interface

# IDE Overview

Qt Creator is an integrated development environment (IDE) that has tools for designing and developing applications with the Qt application framework. With Qt you can develop applications and user interfaces once and deploy them to several desktop, embedded, and mobile operating systems or web browsers (experimental). Qt Creator has the tools for accomplishing your tasks throughout the whole application development life-cycle, from creating a project to deploying the application to the target platforms.

Managing Projects To be able to build and run applications, Qt Creator needs the same information as a compiler would need. It stores the information in the project settings. Qt Creator has templates for creating new projects. They guide you step-by-step through the project creation process, create the necessary files, and specify settings depending on the choices you make. For more information, see Managing Projects. | Designing User Interfaces To create intuitive, modern-looking, fluid user interfaces, you can use Qt Quick and Qt Design Studio. If you need a traditional user interface that has a clear structure and enforces a platform look and feel, you can use the integrated Qt Designer. For more information, see Designing User Interfaces. | Coding As an IDE, Qt Creator differs from a text editor in that it knows how to build and run applications. It understands the C++ and QML languages as code, not just as plain text. Therefore, it can offer useful features, such as semantic highlighting, checking code syntax, code completion, and refactoring actions. Qt Creator supports some of these services also for other programming languages, such as Python, for which a language server is available that provides information about the code to IDEs. For more information, see Coding.
Building and Running Qt Creator integrates cross-platform systems for build automation: qmake, Qbs, CMake, and Autotools. In addition, you can import projects as generic projects and fully control the steps and commands used to build the project.

You can build applications for, deploy them to, and run them on the desktop environment or a device. Kits, build, run, and deployment settings allow you to quickly switch between different setups and target platforms.

For more information, see Building and Running.

Testing

Qt Creator integrates several external native debuggers: GNU Symbolic Debugger (GDB), Microsoft Console Debugger (CDB), and internal JavaScript debugger. In the Debug mode, you can inspect the state of your application while debugging.

Devices have limited memory and CPU power, so you should use them carefully. Qt Creator integrates Valgrind code analysis tools for detecting memory leaks and profiling function execution. In addition, the QML Profiler enables you to profile Qt Quick applications.

Qt Creator integrates the Qt Test, Boost.Test, Catch 2 test, and Google C++ Testing frameworks for unit testing applications and libraries. You can use Qt Creator to create, build, and run autotests.

For more information, see Testing.

Publishing

Qt Creator enables you to create installation packages for mobile devices that you can publish to application stores and other channels. You must make sure that the package contents meet the requirements for publishing on the channel.

For more information, see Publishing to Google Play.

Getting Started ◦ User Interface