Using Qt with Visual Studio without add-in

Question

I recently started using Qt library and I've got a question. Is this possible to use Qt with Visual Studio without special add-in?

I want to just design the UI using qt designer and do the rest in VS Express. How do I do that?

Thanks.

Answer 1

Yes you can, if you would prefer not to use the QtVSAddin it is very easy to use Qt with VS Express without the VS add-in and without having to do any of the uic or moc steps manually. Let QMake (installed with Qt but not part of the QtVSAddin) create your VS project file and do all your project setup in a qmake project file. Whenever you make a change like adding/removing a form or source, modify the qmake project file and regenerate the VS project. Don't modify the VS project file at all, treat it only as a temporary item. QMake will add the rules automatically to the VS project file to rerun uic and moc, you don't need to do anything if you're just modifying source code or forms.

For configuration management purposes I find this a much cleaner approach to use this workflow as you treat the VS project file as only a temporary item (they tend to diff badly and are a pain to maintain in version control).

A couple snippets to help you out:

In your qmake project file ensure you add the following line into it so that VS project files are generated when running on Windows (qmake defaults to generating a makefile).

your_qmake_proj.pro

win32: TEMPLATE = vcapp 

Additionally, it's convenient to have a batch file to rerun qmake so you don't have to bring up a command prompt and set environment up (or change directory to your project in a command prompt that already has the environment setup). If you haven't set the various Qt environment variables with Windows (or prefer not to) make sure to add them to your batch file.

makevcproj.bat

set QTDIR=C:\Qt\x.y.z set PATH=%PATH%;%QTDIR%\bin set QMAKESPEC=win32-msvcXXXX qmake your_qmake_proj.pro pause