With Qt 5.15 well on its way, the Qt Company recently went on to push its cross-platform IDE Qt Creator 4.12 into beta as well. The final release is planned for mid-April.

Projects seem to have been a focal point of recent development works, allowing users better control in all sorts of contexts. There are, for example, options for default build configuration settings and project specific environments, as well as ways to hide disabled files in project trees and filter output panes for lines that do not match expressions.

Other new additions include a GitHub build workflow in the Qt Creator Plugin wizard template and an option to start run configurations directly from the target selector. The Qt creator team also promises a more responsive UI during project parsing and nicer handling of CMake’s source groups. 

Moreover, the use of a separate Qbs executable in v4.12 is meant to improve stability and allow the application of externally provided Qbs. This might be especially helpful given that the Qt Company announced the discontinuation of Qbs, leaving it to be maintained by the community since the end of 2019.

Developers using Qt Creator to program apps for Android targets presumably will have an easier time with the new version, since the tool now automatically detects the Java JDK and selects the correct NDK for the Qt version used. Version 4.12 also comes with an option to automatically download and install required Android tools, and supports Android 11 with API level 30. Meanwhile those looking to develop for remote Linux targets have gained more flexibility in customising installation and deployment steps.

Looking at more general changes, Qt Creator now displays a “restart now” option when a change in settings requires a restart, and includes an option to temporarily disable offending plugins to make sure the program doesn’t crash during startup. It also lets devs link the tool to a Qt installation, to share auto-detected versions and kits, and includes a locator filter for searching in the Qt Project bug tracker.

A list of all changes can be found in project’s change log.