CODEWITHSUNDEEP
c++visual-studioqtmfcqt-creator
Shahriyar
Shahriyar

Reputation: 1583

Beginner questions about Qt

I want to ask some questions which I couldn't find in Qt's website.

  1. Is Qt completely free or just some part of it, or not free at all?
  2. Can I use its library in Visual Studio?
  3. Can I use MFC with Qt together?
  4. The main reason I want to use Qt is to create professional GUI's. What should I actually download? Qt Library, Qt Creator or both?

Upvotes: 0

Views: 208

Answers (2)

oblitum
oblitum

Reputation: 11998

  1. Qt is free (as in free speech and as in free beer): "Qt is available under GPL v3, LGPL v2 and a commercial license".

  2. yes, there's even a plugin (that works for professional visual studio versions).

  3. Why? well anyway, through both libraries you can get native windows handles, so, it's one way of tampering with both at the same time, maybe. But, nor Qt or MFC is made to support one another.

  4. Qt Library is what your source will be based on, Qt Creator is an IDE on its own, whether you'll use it or not for developing for Qt is an option. I myself use Vim and recent versions of cmake instead of qmake when I can.

Upvotes: 3

JBentley
JBentley

Reputation: 6260

  1. It is available free under the LGPL license. Click here to read the circumstances under which it can be used for free. Briefly - you can use it to produce proprietary / commercial software as long as you allow the user to modify / update the Qt dependencies. Typically this means dynamic linking but you can also statically link if you provide your users with the means to rebuild. You can also statically link if you are only going to use the software internally within your company (i.e. not distribute it).

  2. Yes, and they have a Visual Studio plugin to make it easier.

  3. Yes. Although it's hard to see why you would want to unless you're dealing with legacy code. MFC is outdated, awkward to use, and platform specific vs. Qt which is modern, easy to use, and cross platform.

  4. It depends how you want to go about doing it. Just the library is fine if you are going to use it in your own IDE. Alternatively, you can use their IDE, which is Qt Creator, but that is optional. It's worth at least having Qt Designer, which is a tool for building GUIs visually. That is also optional, as you can hand code your GUIs if you wish.

Upvotes: 7

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