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eclipseqt-creator
Nick Bolton
Nick Bolton

Reputation: 39690

How does Qt Creator shape up against Eclipse CDT?

Qt Creator looks like a good IDE. I've been using Eclipse CDT and while a little buggy, it does the job.

Does Qt Creator have the same capabilities as Eclipse CDT?

Upvotes: 18

Views: 14219

Answers (3)

user36457
user36457

Reputation:

Qt Creator uses MinGW under the hood, so it only makes sense that it would be able to compile without using any Qt headers. Simply uncheck all of the headers when making the project and you can code just like you would in any other IDE.

I took an example shot for you to see:

Dead link

Edit: Ahh you edited your question.

Yes of course! Qt is a great environment and can sure hold it's own against competitors like Eclipse in C++. Although keep in mind Eclipse satisfies a myriad of developers, from Java to C++ to Python among many others. Typically an IDE specializing in one language will be more catered to that language, but Eclipse sure does one hell of a job catering to developers of multiple languages with it's vast amount of plugins. If you're comfortable with Eclipse CDT, I think you will feel right at home with Qt Creator, better yet, pampered.

such a great piece of software.

Upvotes: 15

Liviu Gheorghisan
Liviu Gheorghisan

Reputation: 423

Since you mentioned nothing about Qt, I assume that you plan to use QtCreator for a non-Qt C++ project, with its own custom Makefiles, not qmake-based, not Eclipse-CDT-based.

After I switched to QtCreator (now working on the same project, same code) I noticed the following advantages of QtCreator:

  • QtCreator moves faster than EclipseCDT for the same C/C++ project.
  • EclipseCDT is harder to config with custom Makefiles. QtCreator is easier. This is the case when you checkout a project with its own custom Makefiles, not IDE-generated ones, and you need to map that project's build targets to EclipseCDT build targets/configurations.
  • It's easier to deal with .pro(ject) files in QtCreator than workspaces in EclipseCDT.
  • In my case, the EclipseCDT memory footprint after indexing is about ~2GB. For QtCreator, it is only ~600MB, for the same project.
  • Source indexing in EclipseCDT takes a lot of time - when I start EclipseCDT, my computer is frozen for about 20 minutes due to indexing. In QtCreator it takes a quarter of that time, and the computer is responsive during it.

Of course there are a lot of advantages that EclipseCDT offers like the plethora of plugins (EGit, Subclipse, cppcheclipse, etc), but it depends if you really use them.

In the end, I think it's a matter of personal taste and habit, as you can achieve your goals with each of them.

Upvotes: 3

zhengtonic
zhengtonic

Reputation: 730

Well, QTCreator does exactly what a Linux C++/C dev (i assume you are a linux dev from what i read) would want from an IDE. Neither too much nor too little features. The problem of feature rich IDEs like Eclipse is that you might loose control of your project since it pretty much handles everything. If something goes south you have to take the features/plugins you used into consideration during the debugging process.

But overall, eclipse is (imho) the better choice since it makes sense to get used to one IDE that can pretty much handle every language. At work i use eclipse CDT for exactly this reason. For private projects i use QTCreator, because C/C++ are the only languages i use for these projects.

I hope this helps

Upvotes: 7

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