QT Labs on Thursday, published an update, Qt Creator 2.4.0 beta, for the Qt Creator IDE. The release comes just days before the Qt Developer Days 2011, to be held at Munich. The three days event is scheduled to get underway on 25 October.
This beta release brings a number of improvements and new features that developers would find very useful. Qt claims the new release will make you want to not go back. Before we discuss the new features, let’s have a look at the changelog:
Changelog v2.4.0 beta
- QML debugging bugs fixed
- Preferences dialogue now fit nicely onto a netbook
- Faster access to recent searches with UI overhaul of “advanced search”
- Tool Chains and Projects settings merged into a single category “Build & Run”
- Many more minor bug fixes and feature improvements
If we look at the new features, the Qt Creator 2.4.0 beta has quite a lot of them. In fact, Qt might have been actually true when it said you would not want to go back. The feature that stands out of the rest, however, should definitely be the new “synchronize declaration & definition” quick fix. The feature exactly helps you do what the name suggests. Whenever you change a method declaration or definition, Qt Creator tries to find its counterpart in your sources and headers. If a counterpart is found, you can apply a quick fix to make it match the changes you did to the method. The quick fix option is denoted by a little light bulb, also invokable with the Alt+Return shortcut.
The “insert definition from declaration” quick fix has also been improved. It will now minimize the names by e.g. throwing away unnecessary namespaces, and find a much more suitable spot in the code. These two features together will provide a real productivity boost when writing C++ code.
The are many more new features added to the Qt Creator and its not possible for us to list all of them. So better you try the new Qt Creator for yourself and tell us about the feature(s) you like the most, in the comments section below. You can download the Qt Creator 2.4.0 beta package from here.
