Contrary to what I have done previously I now want to use Qt4 under Windows without Visual Studio and its Compiler. That brings me to MinGW. In the following you find an instruction for the installation of all components
Note: I do not use the standalone Version of MinGW, since Qt complained during installtion that this would be incompatible with Qt.
- The first step is to download the opensource Edition of Qt with MinGW (download). Take care you do not select the Version 4.3.3, since that version does not work together with mingw and is thus totally unusable (Link to Bug). During the installation of Qt MinGW is downloaded and installed.
I typically choose the following directories- Qt:
C:\Programme\Qt\4.3.2 - MinGW:
C:\Programme\MinGW-Qt-4.3.2
- Qt:
- The installation directores have to be included in the PATH of the System.
- MinGW does not include the Debugger by default. Therefore we have to download the GDB Debugger manually and unzip it in the MinGW Directory.
- Some Editors rely on ctags. This is also downloaded and unziped into a Directory inside
C:\Programme. - Qt Installs the source code and its release versions. We however need the debug version also. Therefore we start the compilation of Qt from the script “Qt 4.3.2 (Build Debug Libraries)” found in the startmenu of QT
- Now we need an Editor. There are several IDEs available (Qt IDEs.) However some of the do not provide DLLs in their installation which can make it impossible to start them.
I could test Qdevelop and Eclipse so far. Others are Monkey Studio, HaiQ and Eedyuk.
- Qdevelop. Basic IDE with all necessary functions. I however crashes frequently which makes it unusable. If it only would become really stable I would recommend it.
- Eclipse with the Qt Integration (from Trolltech). This IDE has a very good integration of C++ and Qt. It however requires some time to find the right functions. For example the .pro projects are loaded by “Import” and the Signal/Slot Viewer is enabled in the Window->Show View->Other (select Qt->Signal slot Editor). If you find at first not project view minimize the current view. But after some time one has found everything and can work fast with the environment.
It includes precompiled mingw release binaries, it does not include mingw. That is however downloaded within the setup.
If you want to use mingw anyway I suggest to use QtCreator bundled binaries as soon it is release (should be within the next weeks.). That comes with really everything included.
On the open source QT download page there is
“Qt with the MinGW compiler included” version 4.4.3, Size: 149,3 Mb (As mentioned on the page). I downloaded that and installed. Now it is saying MingW is not installed and wants to download it during setup. Then what is meant by saying “MingW compiler included”? It’s another serious problem.
You are totally right. Saying that they have serious problems (which I now changed as I could find the origin of the problem) is not correct.
Not providing the dlls in the installation however means that all my coworkers will have to deal with the same problem, since we all use Matlab and Miktex. So in that sense it is a serious problem.
Matthias Pospiech
Before telling to earth Qt IDEs have seriuos problems, you should take time to build them yourself to understand you simply was not using the correct Qt version to test them.
The dll errors you got may surely comes that you isntalled a qt version build with a differents compiler and that the haiqt / monkey don’t comes with their original qt dll.
Getting sources of these projects and building it yourself will proove you that they are not having serious problem as you tell.
P@sNox, Monkey Studio author.