Build Systems

Most Qt Creator project wizards enable you to choose the build system to use for building the project: qmake, CMake, Meson, or Qbs. qmake is installed and configured when you install Qt. To use one of the other supported build systems, you need to set it up, as described in the the following sections:

• Setting Up CMake

  CMake is an alternative to qmake for automating the generation of build configurations.

• Setting Up Qbs

  Qbs is an all-in-one build tool that generates a build graph from a high-level project description (like qmake or CMake do) and executes the commands in the low-level build graph (like make does).

• Setting Up an Autotools Project

  Qt Creator can open projects that use the Autotools build system. You can build and run the projects directly from Qt Creator.

• Setting Up a Generic Project

  Qt Creator supports generic projects, so you can import existing projects that do not use qmake or CMake. This enables you to use Qt Creator as a code editor and to fully control the steps and commands used to build the project.

• Setting Up Nimble

  The experimental Nim plugin integrates the Nimble package manager for generating Nim application executables that are supported on Windows, Linux, and macOS.

• Setting Up Meson

  Meson is an open source build system meant to be both extremely fast, and, even more importantly, as user friendly as possible.

• Setting Up IncrediBuild

  IncrediBuild decreases the time it takes to build C++ code.

• Setting Up Conan

  The experimental Conan plugin integrates the Conan package manager that speeds up the integration of C or C++ libraries into your project. You can use Conan with most build systems integrated into Qt Creator.