Qt Creator and Qt SDK for more approachable Qt

Qt Creator welcomes new developers Qt Software, a Nokia subsidiary, has released Qt Creator an Integrated Development Environment that makes Qt 4.5 and the Qt tool kit more accessible by providing an IDE customised for Qt development. Rather than having to spend time configuring an IDE to work with Qt, developers can get straight to work with C++ and the Qt tool kit. To make it even simpler, Qt SDK has also been announced, which bundles the Qt 4.5 tool kit with Qt Creator, as a single install package for the Qt newcomer.

The Qt Creator C++ development environment is centred around an editor that provides syntax highlighting, code completion, error hints with static code checking, context sensitive help, code folding and parenthesis matching. Project navigation tools allow programmers to search for classes, functions, symbols and files, while allowing for quick switching between headers and source files, or declarations and definitions. To integrate with Qt, there is support of Qt features like Signals & Slots and qmake and a debugger that is aware of Qt's class structure.
Code completion in Qt Creator Qt Designer, the GUI building tool that comes with the Qt tool kit, is also integrated with Qt Creator, but remains a separate tool to ensure developers can still create their own Qt development environment, with their own IDE.

Qt Creator is being dual licensed under the LGPL and a commercial licence, in a similar fashion to Qt 4.5 itself, but without Qt 4.5's GPL option. The Qt SDK will only target Windows, 32bit and 64 bit Linux and Mac OS X initially, though the company says it is reviewing options for an SDK for embedded platforms.

See also:

• Qt 4.5 arrives, a report from The H.
• Qt Software announces new Qt IDE, Greenhouse, a report from The H.

(djwm)