We are happy to announce the release of Qt Creator 17!
As always what follows is just an excerpt from all the improvements and fixes that we did in Qt Creator 17. Please have a look at our change log for a more extensive overview.
General
The "2024" light and dark themes that we introduced in Qt Creator 15 and updated in Qt Creator 16 are now the default. You can still use Preferences > Environment > Interface > Theme to select a different theme, of course. We have reviewed and refreshed the icons in Qt Creator to align with the new visual style and to achieve a more consistent user interface.
We moved the default registry for extensions to GitHub. Multiple sources of extensions can now be set in Preferences > Extensions > Browser - use at your own risk! We also extended the information that is shown for extensions that are not installed yet, and you can directly drop an archive of an extension on the Extensions mode to install it.
Projects
A bigger change in Qt Creator 17 is that we made run configurations "part of" the build configuration. Before this, the build configurations and run configurations were completely independent. Now, each run configuration belongs to a certain build configuration, and switching the active build configuration also switches the set of available run configurations. This covers the often requested use case of having different run parameters, like different command line arguments or different environments for different build configurations, such as Debug or Release.
Additionally, you can now copy the values from one run configuration to another, regardless of which build configuration they belong to, with the new "Clone into This" button.
CMake
We added the option to install missing Qt components with the Qt Online Installer (if Qt Creator is linked to one) when the CMake configuration fails with missing Qt packages. This relies on the Preferences > CMake > General > Package manager auto setup functionality in Qt Creator, that requires the project to be configured with CMake from Qt Creator. For more information on this feature and the other improvements with regards to CMake support in Qt Creator, check out the separate blog post.
Python
We added support for opening pyproject.toml based projects in Qt Creator. This is now also the default for new PySide projects created via Qt Creator's project wizards. Opening .pyproject-based PySide projects is still supported too.
Editing
C++
We switched our prebuilt binaries to LLVM 20.1.3, for updated C++ support. There are new quick fixes for adding Qt's string literal operators like "_ba" or "_L1" to string literals. We also fixed some issues with function-like built-ins and function-like macros.
We added quick fixes that aim to make your life as a user easier when you want to use Qt functionality that you haven't made available to your project yet: When you try to use Qt classes in your code that are not found by the code model, a new quick fix adds the corresponding include to the source file and the missing package dependency to the project file. A similar quick fix on includes of Qt headers that are not found just adds the missing package dependency to the project file.
QML
The code style options in Preferences > Qt Quick > Code Style now allow using the qmlformat that is integrated into the QML language server for code formatting, as well as the built-in formatter, and a custom, qmlformat compatible formatter. Reformatting the document is now also available via the context menu and the Tools > QML/JS menu.
The toolbar for the QML code editor got a new button for .ui.qml files, that opens the file in Qt Design Studio.
Analyzer
For Axivion, we added support for local dashboards with new tool buttons Local Build and Local Dashboard to the Issues view in the Debug > Axivion mode. We also added various new settings in Preferences > Analyze > Axivion.
Version Control
For the Git version control, we added variants for the various "diff" actions that work on the staged changes instead of unstaged changes. The tooltip for Instant Blame now has a new action for reverting a change, and the Add Tag dialog is now also able to create annotated tags.
Get Qt Creator 17.0.0
The new version is available as an update in the Qt Online Installer (commercial, opensource). You also find commercially licensed offline installers on the Qt Account Portal, and opensource packages on our opensource download page. This is a free upgrade for all users.
Please post issues in our bug tracker. You can also find us on IRC on #qt-creator on irc.libera.chat, and on the Qt Creator mailing list.
You can read the Qt Creator Manual in Qt Creator in the Help mode or access it online in the Qt documentation portal.
