2020 Qt to support Visual Studio

Qt to support Visual Studio UNIX comes

Qt could also be a preferred cross-platform framework for application development and interface style. Its numerous libraries and toolsets square measure typically accustomed produce, test, and deploy applications that concentrate on multiple platforms and operational systems together with UNIX, Windows, macOS and embedded/microcontroller systems. Qt recently declared its conceive to support Visual Studio UNIX comes in Associate in Nursing future unharness of the Qt Visual Studio Tools extension, scheduled for this summer.

This work can build on Qt’s support for MSBuild-based Windows comes and might permit you to make and run Qt-enabled comes on each Windows and UNIX. you will use Qt Visual Studio Tools with MSBuild-based Windows comes nowadays.

Cross Platform Development with Qt and Visual Studio

In Associate in Nursing future unharness of the Qt Visual Studio Tools, scheduled for this summer, we tend to conceive to add support for Visual Studio UNIX comes. Since the introduction of the C++ UNIX work, users have had the chance of working on UNIX development in Visual Studio. This feature is of potential interest to Qt developers, given the cross-platform nature of Qt itself, that is why we tend to square measure currently going to add support for it among the Qt VS Tools extension.

As to however the cross compilation really works, once building UNIX comes in VS, the build method and overall orchestration can believe either MSBuild or CMake, among identical method as ancient Win32 comes. The build tools themselves can then run throughout a compilation server, accessible through SSH. For MSBuild comes, Visual Studio permits choosing either gcc or clang as a result of the C++ compiler.

Our set up for adding support for UNIX comes is to use the options enclosed among the VS UNIX development work to expand the prevailing Qt/MSBuild targets. The goal is to be able to build and run Qt-enabled MSBuild comes, each natively for Windows or cross-built for UNIX.

As the initiative towards that finish, and as a logo of construct, we tend to manually regenerate a simple Qt example (wiggly) to Associate in Nursing MSBuild project that targets each Windows and UNIX. Pressing F5 can build the project for the chosen target then launch a rectify session, either domestically for a Windows build or via gdbserver simply just in case of UNIX.

This exercise incontestable that it's potential to use the Visual Studio IDE to develop, build and even rectify multi-platform Qt applications. Therefore, despite the target platform, the Qt VS Tools extension ought to be able to seamlessly assist with the setup and usage of Qt tools in MSBuild comes. We've conjointly learned that the changes to the Qt/MSBuild targets, needed for supporting each native and cross-platform builds, can principally specialize in the method the Qt tools square measure invoked. Most (if not all) of the logic that supports the blending of Qt with MSBuild can stay valid for UNIX.

In this post, we've lined the case wherever VS is utilized to concentrate on a UNIX host. However, as long because the VS UNIX work needs solely Associate in Nursing SSH-accessible wildebeest toolchain, it's potential to use a cross-compiler toolchain instead of the host one. Conceivably, it ought to be potential to use VS as Associate in Nursing alternate IDE for developing with Qt for MCUs. We'll explore this situation in another web log post.

Thank you for reading and for your interest in Qt and so the VS Tools extension. Please leave a comment below if you think that (or not) that this subject has connection , or if you've any queries or suggestions. H