c++ - How to configure CLion IDE for Qt Framework?

Question

How to configure CLion IDE for Qt Framework? Is this IDE compatible with Qt, or are there other IDEs compatible with Qt?

I just want to try to use something else than Qt Creator.

Answer 1

I was as desperate as you, until I read this Quora discussion. It worked perfectly for me!

To summarize, there are 2 main steps:

Firstly, CLion uses CMake to compile your code. It is based on CMake configuration files (e.g "CMakeLists.txt"). You have to add Qt based CMake commands (the lines with 'find_package' and 'target_link_libraries'):

cmake_minimum_required(VERSION 3.5)
project(myqtproject)

set(CMAKE_CXX_FLAGS "${CMAKE_CXX_FLAGS} -std=c++11")

set(SOURCE_FILES main.cpp)
find_package(Qt5Widgets REQUIRED)                 <-- this line

add_executable(myqtproject ${SOURCE_FILES})

target_link_libraries(myqtproject Qt5::Widgets)   <-- this line

Secondly, CLion has to use the cmake binary installed by Qt. For that, go to: 'Preferences' -> 'Build, Execution, Deployment' -> 'CMake' and in 'CMake options' append the CMake path that Qt uses, which should be in the directory where Qt is installed. For instance, on OSX:

-DCMAKE_PREFIX_PATH=/Users/edouard/Qt/5.7/clang_64/lib/cmake

You can test that everything is working fine, by doing a little test script in main.cpp:

#include <QApplication>
#include <QDebug>

using namespace std;

int main() {
    qDebug() << QT_VERSION_STR;
    return 1;
}

Which should display something like:

/Users/edouard/Library/Caches/CLion2016.2/cmake/generated/myqtproject-89a4132/89a4132/Debug/untitled
5.7.0

Process finished with exit code 1

UPDATE

I was stuck with the problem of adding Qt5 modules (for instance QSql). You can do this by adding in the CMakeLists.txt:

find_package(Qt5Sql REQUIRED)

just after the other find_package, and adding in the last line:

target_link_libraries(myqtproject Qt5::Widgets Qt5::Sql)

You can do this with all the other Qt5 modules.