pseudofish

Qt is a happy little framework that runs on pretty much anything from Windows to embedded Linux. Most of my experience with it has been on unix variants or on Mac OS X.

I thought I’d try it out under Windows, and to make things interesting, I would use Visual C++ Express Edition as the C++ compiler. Trolltech’s website states that it is possible, but not details as to how (at least not that I found). My aim is not install cygwin or the full Visual Studio package.

Warning: This is a strange configuration. If you want to use Qt for open source development on Windows, just download the .exe from [here][] and you’ll get g++ included as part of MinGW. If you want to use Qt for commercial development, then the full Visual Studio integration is highly recommended.

Qt (commercial) is integrated into Visual Studio, however the Express version of VC++ is limited so that it won’t play nicely with normal plugins. The main reason to use VC++ Express is for its command line tools.

Step 1 - Install Qt.

I installed the Qt commercial version built for VS2005. This seems to work just fine with VC++ Express.

This version Qt is available under license from Trolltech and is also available for a trial period. See here for more details.

Step 2 - Install Visual C++, Express Edition.

VC++ Express can be downloaded from here.

Run the installer and say yes to everything.

At this point you can use C++ to make .NET applications. To be able to create native applications you need the Platform SDK.

Step 3 - Install Platform SDK.

This MSDN article explains how to get the Platform SDK to work with VC++ Express.

Basically, download the SDK from here and install.

Step 4 - Mess with the environment.

Edit the qtvars.bat file (in C:\Qt\4.2.2\bin) so that the call to vsvars32.bat is outside an if statement.

The if statements check for the normal Visual Studio install, but miss the Express version.

It is useful if you add C:\Qt\4.2.2\bin to your path, as then you can call the qtvars.bat script from the command line.

Add the following variable to your environment:

QTDIR=C:\Qt\4.2.2\bin

Step 5 - Try it out.

Make a new directory and create a file called hello.pro with the following:

TEMPLATE = app
SOURCES = main.cpp

Create a file called main.cpp with the following:

int main( int argc, char *argv[] ) {
    QApplication app( argc, argv );
    QLabel *helloLabel = new QLabel( "Hello World" );
    helloLabel->show();

    return app.exec();
}

From the command line run the following commands:

c:\hello>qtvars
...
c:\hello>qmake
...
c:\hello>nmake
...
c:\hello>release\hello.exe

You should now see a very simple application that consists of a single label saying “Hello World”. Additionally, you also have a full Qt development environment that is substantially more useful than hello.exe.

[here]: