Reviews IDE Qt Creator 2.0 A month after the release of KDevelop 4, Graham Morrison reviews its arch nemesis. But which one’s best? There’s only one way to find out…

ot on the heels of KDevelop 4, In brief... and several months before we Hanticipated, Nokia released A development version 2 of its groundbreaking environment for integrated Qt development C++ programmers environment. It had been expected to who use the Qt framework. Also be part of Qt 4.7, which is still in alpha consider Eclipse, testing. Instead, it has been released as KDevelop 4 or part of Nokia’s Qt SDK 1.0, a slightly plain old Kate. modified version of Qt that includes a device emulator and support for MeeGo. You can also grab it as part of the Qt 4.6.3 package and as a standalone project. Fortunately, installation is easy. You grab a large binary, make this Qt Creator’s debugging capabilities are greatly improved – it can even debug executable, and run it from the image types by rendering their output to a temporary window. command line. If you do this from your user account, all the required files install automatically, including a link to Creator we’ve seen, and for the first time, can if you can’t find the object, you can now in your Desktop folder. Clicking on this genuinely help the newcomer. You can search using regular expressions. will launch the IDE. You won’t even need start by exploring examples that give an Another area of rapid expansion is the Qt development libraries, as these overview of the UI, then move on to Creator’s debugging. It’s now fully are included by default. Ubuntu users, some simple template tools before compatible with GDB 7, and can take working your way through the official Qt advantage of the new reverse direction docs. All of this is done through the feature that lets you step back through “Qt Creator can now embedded help system, so you never an application’s execution. What’s more need to leave the main window. important for Qt developers is that make a lot more sense Creator can now make a lot more sense of your Qt code.” Bugtastic of your Qt code using a series of Python Creator 2.0 loaded all of our 1.x projects helpers that automatically inspect without problem, and you can now work certain Qt and standard datatypes. for instance, will only need to install the with more than one project at a time, There are still a number of annoying build-essentials package, followed by switching between their code trees design decisions, such as the watch Qt, to start developing. using the panel on the left-hand side. window only appearing in debug mode, A lot has changed since version 1.0, The only problem with this is that it’s but Creator 2.0 is a massive step up. which now feels more like a prototype never clear which project is going to Add true cross-platform capabilities than a major release. The new launch build and run. The solution is to use the and MeeGo development, and Creator wizard, for example, is one of the best new target selector tool, just below the becomes a killer app. Roll on Qt 4.7. LXF build icon. This enables you to switch between projects to build, displaying Features at a glance their name beneath the play icon, as Verdict well as letting you choose between Qt Creator 2.0 debug, release and architecture. The syntax highlighting is just as Developer: Nokia Web: http://qt.nokia.com good as in the previous version, with Price: Free under LGPL small additions like symbol names being Features 9/10 emphasised when you use them within Performance 9/10 a line. You can even use this feature to Ease of use 7/10 refactor your code. Right-click on a Documentation 10/10 symbol, select ‘Rename Symbol Under If you like Qt, this is the best GDB 7 support Cursor’, and as you type a new name for development environment you can Refactoring it, all other occurrences are updated in use. If not, you should try Qt again. Reverse debugging and Change a symbol’s real time. This function even stretches excellent Qt object support name and it changes helps fix problems fast. in all other instances. to other files, such as the header, when Rating 9/10 you change the name of an object. And

26 LXF135 September 2010 www.linuxformat.com

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