Release for Qt Creator 4.14

[christian-rauch]

Are there plans to release an installer for the newer Qt Creator 4.13?

The last release is nearly a year ago and newer Qt Creator versions deal better with HiDPI screens.

[Levi-Armstrong]

I do. I have time coming up where I plan to upgrade and fix some issues with it. I also plan to release it as a snap package and update CI so these are automatically generated to simplify the release process.

[christian-rauch]

That's awesome! Thanks. I very much prefer an auto-updated snap package over the manual installer.

You need a sponsor button for this project :-)

[v4hn]

Cross referencing another discussion on newer versions of QtCreator.

Personally, I run neither Ubuntu nor a snap ecosystem. I believe the biggest issue is not setting up better deployment, but actually patching for the API of newer qtc versions. It looks like the long term plan has been (for quite a long time) to get the plugin updated and submit it for inclusion in the qtcreator-developer tree, so that further API changes will be adjusted by the upstream maintainers.

At the moment I run with a slightly patched version of qt-creator 4.10 (with llvm 10 support), but I experience quite a lot of random lag in window redraw that might be one of the unaddressed issues even with 4.10. I tried to migrate to 4.12 before, but eventually gave up because I don't even know about all the functionality that needs to be tested with such a migration and there have been many API changes.

@Levi-Armstrong I know you are doing lots of great work at all fronts and there's only so much one can do per day.
You've been talking in terms of future tense for over half a year now w.r.t. this issue. Is there any way to support you in getting this working with current qtc and submit it? It would be really nice to see it fully functional with current (and future) versions.

[vincent-hui]

Qt Creator 4.13 RC released.
Qt Creator 4.13 should be released this month.
Are there plans to release an installer for the newer Qt Creator 4.13?

[vincent-hui]

Qt Creator 4.13 released
https://www.qt.io/blog/qt-creator-4.13-released

[christian-rauch]

@Levi-Armstrong As an intermediate step to get the entire plugin functionality upstreamed, would it be possible to split the whole functionality into a catkin/colcon plugin and a ROS1/2 plugin? I imagine that upstreaming a catkin/colcon-only plugin first would reduce the maintenance costs as you would only need to adapt the ROS-specific parts, and from my perspective the catkin/colcon support provides the main functionality of the plugin as you can build and debug ROS nodes without the templates.

[vincent-hui]

Qt Creator 4.14 Beta released

[vincent-hui]

Qt Creator 4.14 should be released next month.
Are there plans to release an installer for the newer Qt Creator 4.14?

Thanks

[vincent-hui]

Qt Creator 4.14 RC released

Are there plans to release an installer for Qt Creator 4.14?

Thanks

[christian-rauch]

Is the current qt-creator-ros plugin hosted in this repo still using Qt 4.9.2?

Do you mean Qt Creator instead of Qt?
The latest release will install Qt Creator 4.9.2, which is compiled with Qt 5.12.4.

[vincent-hui]

Qt Creator 4.14 released
https://www.qt.io/blog/qt-creator-4.14-released

[christian-rauch]

@vincent-hui see #417

For the impatient, you can use pre-built binaries (without the templates) for Ubuntu 20.04 / Qt Creator 4.14:

1. download libROSProjectManager.so.txt
2. remove the .txt (mv libROSProjectManager.so.txt libROSProjectManager.so)
3. copy libROSProjectManager.so to your Qt Creator plugin path, e.g. ~/Qt/Tools/QtCreator/lib/qtcreator/plugins/

Or all in one step:

wget https://github.com/ros-industrial/ros_qtc_plugin/files/5838646/libROSProjectManager.so.txt -O ~/Qt/Tools/QtCreator/lib/qtcreator/plugins/libROSProjectManager.so

[christian-rauch]

Support has been merge by #417. Please create a new issue if something is not working as it used to with version 4.9.2.

[vincent-hui]

Hi @christian-rauch

Thank you very much for your porting.

Sorry , currently I have no time to test it.

Is there any plan to upstream the repo of ros_qtc_plugin to the repo of Qt Creator?

I think upstreaming ros_qtc_plugin can greatly benefit to both of ROS community of Qt community.

[christian-rauch]

I also think that upstreaming this into the Qt Creator repo would reduce the API maintenance burden. But I have no idea how this is done and what the implications would be. Would they adapt the API for you, or do you have to keep maintainer anyway with the same duties that you would have now (i.e. keeping track of API changes)?

Maybe @Levi-Armstrong knows more about the upstreaming work?

[Levi-Armstrong]

They should keep things up to date with API changes. The only thing that we would need to do is update the style to match the Qt Creator style and create PR.

[christian-rauch]

The only thing that we would need to do is update the style to match the Qt Creator style and create PR.

This should be relatively easy using a clang-format style file.

If upstreaming the plugin (or parts of it) is a viable option, maybe we should go this route instead of putting the efforts into creating a snap version of Qt Creator.
@Levi-Armstrong Do you know the procedure how to get this upstream? Do you need help with this?

[Levi-Armstrong]

Any help with getting the style update would be great. I will work on getting the contributor agreement signed so I can submit the PR. Then it would be working through any request they may have.

[vincent-hui]

https://lists.qt-project.org/pipermail/qt-creator/2021-February/008783.html
Should we create a new issue to discuss the ros_qtc_plugin release for Qt Creator 4.15?
Thanks

[christian-rauch]

The release of 4.15 is still months away (~ Apr 20 2021). I would stick with #325 to track the integration into the upstream repo.

[vincent-hui]

I propose the first task of ros_qtc_plugin release for Qt Creator 4.15 is upstreaming ros_qtc_plugin.

[vincent-hui]

Qt Creator 4.15 has been branched out.
https://github.com/qt-creator/qt-creator/tree/4.15

[vincent-hui]

Qt Creator 4.15 Beta2 released.

[vincent-hui]

Qt Creator 4.15 released

[christian-rauch]

Qt Creator 4.15 released

Qt Creator 4.15 ROS plugin released :-)
https://github.com/ros-industrial/ros_qtc_plugin/tree/4.15

plugin: libROSProjectManager.zip

[vincent-hui]

@christian-rauch thank a lot.