I'm about to start a Qt project on the Mac and I'm not sure which IDE to choose between:
Qt Creator
Xcode
Which are the advantages/disadvantages of these two IDEs for Qt development on the Mac?
Personally I'm using QtCreator in order to have the same on all platforms. The main advantage I give to it is that it have been developed for Qt.
The main advantage I give to XCode is its integration to MacOSX.
Now for you it depends:
If you always use XCode, You should continue using it for Qt to keep your marks
If you always use QtCreator, you should continue using it
If you start developing on MacOSX (or you've never used XCode) you should use QtCreator
Then my advice is: use the IDE you prefer to use
Qt Creator has much better integration with Qt in code editing, UI designing, and debugging. And it's the same across platform.
My issue with Creator on the Mac is it's debugging facility is not on a par with other platform. The python script-able debugger is not as functioning as, say Windows version of Creator. This is not Qt/Nokia's fault since the gcc/gdb on Mac are versions behind. Apple switched its focus to LLVM and left gcc tool chain, eh, to its natural death on the platform.
I actually do much of my developing on a Windows VM. Only switch to Mac for building and debugging something that's only Mac-specific.
Both options have issues. Qt Creator has problems with projects that have complicated project hierarchies (complicated in terms of folder structure.)
With Xcode, there are issues if you want to have some objective-c source in your project and if you want to be able to step into Qt source while debugging.
Most of my development is done on the Mac using Xcode and BBEdit. I switch over to Developer Studio on Windows for testing or if I need to be able to step into Qt while debugging.
Given the amount of time we all spend working working in these environments, you should try both and use what suits you best.
You also need to consider eclipse. I have spent the last week using Qt Creator and being a long-time eclipse user (for both Java and C++) I find it inferior. Once (if) Xcode 4 support is added to Qt, this might change, but at the moment my vote goes with eclipse even without the 'Qt Integration' available (i.e. just using the 'C++ Makefile project with existing sources').
Related
I'm sure there must be a simple explanation, I have downloaded the latest sdk and installed it using default settings in 10.7.5. I've used QT on windows before so I know how to make a project, however when I try and make a project expecting something like this to appear:
http://doc.qt.digia.com/qtcreator/images/qtcreator-new-qt-quick-project-wizard.png
But this is what I actually see:
http://trollfx.com/qt_whatisee.jpg
There are no gui project available, also none of the samples are present on the welcome page. searching for them just does nothing. I'm completely stumped, can anyone advise please?
I had the same problem.
I think what you've done is you've downloaded QtCreator as a stand alone app, and you're missing the actual Qt base files.
Uninstall QtCreator and then go to http://qt-project.org/downloads and download Qt itself, which comes with QtCreator bundled with it.
Make sure you have correctly configured the directory where Qt is installed. It needs to know where to find the qmake utility. (Specifically, go to Preferences|Build & Run|Qt Versions, click Add and locate the qmake executable).
Btw, it is assumed that you have installed XCode (at least its Unix command-line development tools.) In contrast to Windows, the Mac version does not come with a compiler. You need XCode for that.
I currently have a VS2010 project that uses the Qt 4.8 framework. We needed to have some native libraries for video on windows and we will develop the same for the mac. We are now migrating the project over to the Mac Os so we can release on that OS also. I am brand new to Mac, last friday being the first time i have even fooled around with one, let alone xcode. Most of my dev experience has been in the Visual Studio world so i am not too familiar with "make" projects. We do have some pro files but they are more than a year out of date. What is the best way to migrate the projects between the platforms? Any tips or tricks? Any help would be appreciated.
Thanks
If you're going to the effort of migrating from Windows to Mac, I'd definitely recommend using CMake.
It has many advantages over using hard-coded project files/makefiles. This answer points to some CMake tutorials.
There are some conversion tools which are meant to be able to convert between other buildsystems and CMake, but I have no personal experience of these.
The CMake documentation sometimes leaves a little to be desired, but the mailing list is usually an excellent place to get help and advice.
I've a project made in VS2010 for windows using C++. Now I want to port it to MAC so that the code base remains constant as much as possible. I used QT for GUI for the same reason. But I couldn't find a simple way like import VS project along with project settings or some such thing in Xcode to get started quickly on mac part. Any Ideas?
AFAIK, there is no convertor.
Alternative approach: You can use each IDE as a front-end for another tool, like CMake or qmake.
You could also try Qt Creator, Eclipse, or...
I wonder if there is any RAD tool for Mac OS X. Something like Delphi for Windows.
Lazarus is an IDE for Free Pascal that works on Mac OS X (among other platforms). Obligatory screenshot here.
Note: Lazarus supports two widget sets (Carbon and QT), with a third in Alpha (COCOA), most screenshots will be of the Carbon port nowadays.
Which languages are you interested in?
Certainly check out Cocoa, XCode and Interface Builder.
An actual Delphi for Windows that will allow you to cross compile your applications to Macintosh has been promised by Embarcadero (the current owners of Delphi).
The IDE will be a Windows product but the binaries it produces will run on a Mac.
It was due this year but wasn't ready for the September release of the latest Delphi. There are likely to be preview releases for existing Delphi customers in a few months from now but the actual product probably won't be released until around September 2011.
Here's an update.
With Delphi XE-2, you can now build and compile native 32-bit Mac OS X programs.
Delphi Prism XE is an add-on for Visual Studio that supports both .NET as Mono. This includes the MONO version used by the Mac. It's not the ideal solution and I haven't been able to check if it really works, since I don't have a Mac. But I have Prism and now my .NET environment allows me to write Delphi applications for the Mac. Again, too bad I don't have a Mac, else I would have been able to tell you how good that is!.
It appears as if the Delphi Prism IDE can also be installed as a stand-alone compiler with it's own IDE on a Mac. Again, I haven't tested this. I just know it has this option, since I saw it appear during installation.
As Frank Shearar already said, Lazarus is a Pascal IDE which would be a better solution for the Mac, right now.
I wrote my programs in Visual Studio. now i have an mac and i want to program there like visual-studio. but there are differences between them. Is there any solution that i can write a code in Xcode that it is compatible in Visual Studio and works without any errors?
Is there any solution that i can write
a code in Xcode that it is compatible
in visual-Studio and works without any
errors?
Write standard portable source code. Xcode uses the GCC toolchain, VS uses MS's cl compiler. They are different. Xcode does have the notion of projects and solutions and allows configurations. However, they are a bit complicated (so beware). Also, the Xcode debugger is buggy and the editor is not as feature-rich as the VS2005/VS2008 IDE.
You can build Cocoa/Carbon based applications on Xcode but these won't compile/run on VS. Similarly, you can build Win32 applications on VS which won't run/compile on Xcode.
All in all, Xcode is your best shot at an IDE if you're not a vim/emacs fan.
You can easily write portable low level code in C/C++, but any GUI code or code which calls the OS will be non-portable.
Java would be also a good solution for platform independency. NetBeans would be my choice.
Would in theory be possible to have a vs template so you go project structure and intellisense then when you build have a build script export to the mac or source repository then build on mac
Either way Xcode needs to be run on a Mac.
You can use Mono and MonoDevelop, then the programs you create on Mac can run on Windows also. I use Visual Studio on my job, but my spare time I like to play around with mono on my mac. http://www.mono-project.com/