Compiling Qt for use with Visual Studio

First, you have got to obtain the Qt open source SDK. This can be done by following this link:

http://qt.nokia.com/downloads

Open the Visual Studio Command Prompt by using the windows menu folders “Start”, “Programs”, “Microsoft Visual Studio” as well as “Visual Studio Tools” and execute the menu entry “Visual Studio Command Prompt”. Dependend on your QT version, in the prompt the following steps have to be taken:

  • Change to directory C:\Qt\2009.04\qt
  • Run configure -debug-and-release and answer with “o” for open source and “y” to accept the license
  • Then run nmake sub-src. This may take some time, because all libaries are built excluding the Qt demos. Just calling nmake would build them, too.

Now the release and debug libaries can be found in C:\Qt\2009.04\lib. The last step is adding C:\Qt\2009.04\bin to the path:

  • For this you have to open the control panel of your system
  • Open “System”
  • Choose tab “Advanced”
  • Click on the button to set environment variables
  • Add C:\Qt\2009.04\qt\bin to the path and insert a new system variable QTDIR setting its value to C:\Qt\2009.04\qt.

The installation is finished and can be tested by running qmake -v:

    QMake version 2.01a
    Using Qt version 4.5.3 in C:\Qt\2009.04\qt\lib