Qt Creator for SBE201

Installing Qt Creator
Running your first project
- Note: file naming

This semester we will rely on the Qt Creator as an Integrated Development Environment (IDE).

Qt Creator ships with the powerful and rich Qt project that features a large (or maybe the largest) spectrum of C++ libraries.

It is interesting to learn that many famous applications and organizations largely depend on Qt project. See the following lists from Wikipedia to learn about the most famous users of Qt: 3 Qt in use

Installing Qt Creator

Install Qt prerequisites

In Ubuntu, open your terminal (Ctrl+Alt+T) and copy paste the following command (to paste in the terminal: Ctrl+Shift+V), then hit Enter:

sudo apt install build-essential cmake libgl1-mesa-dev wget

Notes: `sudo` and `apt`

sudo: stands for super user do, and this is required when you make system-wide changes, like installing new libraries for the system. For detailed manual, write in the terminal man sudo then Enter. Press Q to close the manual and return to the terminal.
apt: installation tool that links with large software repositories, so when you write apt install x, it will search for a package x within a stored database of the the available software in the linked repositories. You can install several packages at once like what we did in the command. Also, for detailed manual, write in the terminal man apt then Enter. Press Q to close the manual and return to the terminal.

Download the offline installer

In this page: Offline Qt Downloads, you will find different download link for each system.

We will download from the following link Qt 5.14.1 for Linux 64-bit (1.2 GB) (Right click and Save link as). Alternatively, you can download files from the terminal using wget application. So, copy the download link and give it to the wget:

wget -c http://download.qt.io/official_releases/qt/5.14/5.14.1/qt-opensource-linux-x64-5.14.1.run

Notes: `wget`

This will download qt-opensource-linux-x64-5.14.1.run into the terminal working directory. When you first open the terminal, its working directory is your home directory ~.
The flag -c means we ask wget to support continuing download in case the internet connection has broken, so it doesn’t download the whole file again. More details can be found in the manual man wget.

Installation

After downloading qt-opensource-linux-x64-5.14.1.run, from the terminal issue the following commands:

chmod a+x qt-opensource-linux-x64-5.14.1.run
sudo ./qt-opensource-linux-x64-5.14.1.run

This will pop up the installation wizard:

Press Next:

Create an account for the first time, then press Next:

Tick for your consent to the obligations shown

Next

Specify the location of the installation, then Next:

Just select the two items highlighted, then Next:

Agree for the listed licenses, then Next:

Finally proceed with Install, and Finish.

Run your Qt Creator

For the first time, open the Ubuntu dash (at the left bottom corner), then look for Qt. Alternatively, run directly from the terminal using:

/opt/Qt5.14.1/Tools/QtCreator/bin/qtcreator.sh

Finally, to add the Qt Creator to the menu on the left as a shortcut, right click on the icon, then press Add to the favourites.

Running your first project

Open Qt Creator, and from the menu bar press File->New File or Project..

From the dialog menu, select Application->Qt Console Application->Choose

Select the location and the name of the project

Note: file naming

In general, avoid using spaces in a file or a folder name. Instead, use - or _ to separate words. Alternatively, you may use PascalCase naming convention.

Use CMake as a build system:

Now leave this as it is:

Leave as it is:

Now all is good, click Finish:

Finally, you will find the file main.cpp opened with the following content there:

#include <QCoreApplication>

int main(int argc, char *argv[])
{
  QCoreApplication a(argc, argv);

  return a.exec();
}

Instead let’s use the following code:

#include <iostream>

int main()
{
  std::cout << "Hello SBE 201!\n";
  return 0;
}

Then press on the Build icon to compile your code: