Replacing QT Creator with VSCode / neovim

CS106B at Stanford requires the use of QT Creator, an IDE I despise. So I spent a few hours figuring out how to use neovim with QT Projects. This same guide should also work for VSCode, although I'm not sure how the process differs on Windows – this tutorial is designed for MacOS.

First, install the clangd extension for the editor of your choice. For me, it was LazyVim (clangd can be installed as a LazyExtra) but this should also work with the same VSCode extension.

Next, open your QT project in QT Creator, and wait for it to finish indexing using clangd. After this is done, you can close QT Creator and not touch it again until your next project.

Now there should be a directory /build/Qt_6_7_2_for_macOS-Debug/.qtc_clangd with a file compile_commands.json in it. Move this file to the root of your project (next to your .pro file). Note your QT version may be different.

Now, run qmake -o Makefile YourProjectName.pro in your root directory. This creates a makefile that can be run with make. Your output should look something like this:

 ▲ Developer/qt-demo qmake -o Makefile Demo.pro
Info: creating stash file /Users/eliot/Developer/qt-demo/.qmake.stash

Finally, we can improve some parts of the build process. Running make builds your app, and you can run it with open YourProjectName.app. To combine these steps into one command (and to automatically kill previous instances of the app) create a file make.sh with this content:

pkill YourProjectName

make && open YourProjectName.app

Then make it executable using chmod +x ./make.sh. Now, you should be able to run your project using ./make.sh, just like you would in QT Creator.

Bonus Config

For those who want a faster build process, I configured a keymap in neovim that allows me to build and run my project with space + period. To do so, I just added the following lines to my keymaps.lua

vim.keymap.set("n", "<leader>.", function()
  vim.cmd("!./make.sh")
end, { desc = "Run ./make.sh file (for c++)" })

This should allow you to build fairly quickly! I'm not sure how easy it is to do the same with VSCode, but I'm sure there are some fantastic auto-build extensions available.

Hope this helps!