/**************************************************************************** ** ** Copyright (C) 2019 The Qt Company Ltd. ** Contact: https://www.qt.io/licensing/ ** ** This file is part of the Qt Creator documentation. ** ** Commercial License Usage ** Licensees holding valid commercial Qt licenses may use this file in ** accordance with the commercial license agreement provided with the ** Software or, alternatively, in accordance with the terms contained in ** a written agreement between you and The Qt Company. For licensing terms ** and conditions see https://www.qt.io/terms-conditions. For further ** information use the contact form at https://www.qt.io/contact-us. ** ** GNU Free Documentation License Usage ** Alternatively, this file may be used under the terms of the GNU Free ** Documentation License version 1.3 as published by the Free Software ** Foundation and appearing in the file included in the packaging of ** this file. Please review the following information to ensure ** the GNU Free Documentation License version 1.3 requirements ** will be met: https://www.gnu.org/licenses/fdl-1.3.html. ** ****************************************************************************/ // ********************************************************************** // NOTE: the sections are not ordered by their logical order to avoid // reshuffling the file each time the index order changes (i.e., often). // Run the fixnavi.pl script to adjust the links to the index order. // ********************************************************************** /*! \page creator-editor-external.html \if defined(qtdesignstudio) \previouspage creator-qml-performance-monitor.html \nextpage studio-help.html \else \previouspage creator-keyboard-shortcuts.html \nextpage creator-task-lists.html \endif \title Using External Tools You can use external tools directly from \QC. Qt Linguist, QML preview tools, and the default text editor for your system are preconfigured for use. You can change their default configurations and configure new tools. To run the tools, select \uicontrol Tools > \uicontrol External, or use the \c x filter in the locator. \section1 Using Qt Linguist You can use the Qt Linguist release manager tools, lupdate and lrelease, directly from \QC. The lupdate tool is used to synchronize source code and translations. The lrelease tool is used to create run-time translation files for use by the released application. When you \l{Creating Projects}{create a new project}, you can automatically generate a translation source file (TS) for one language. You can add other languages later by editing the project file. To synchronize TS files from a translator with the application code, select \uicontrol Tools > \uicontrol External > \uicontrol Linguist > \uicontrol {Update Translations (lupdate)}. To generate from the TS files Qt message (QM) files that can be used by an application, select \uicontrol Tools > \uicontrol External > \uicontrol Linguist > \uicontrol {Release Translations (lrelease)}. By default, the project .pro file is passed to the tools as an argument. To specify other command line arguments for the tools, select \uicontrol Tools > \uicontrol External > \uicontrol Configure}. To open TS files in Qt Linguist, right-click a TS file in the \uicontrol Projects or \uicontrol {File System} view and select \uicontrol {Open With} > \uicontrol {Qt Linguist} in the context menu. For more information about Qt Linguist, see \l{Qt Linguist Manual}. \section1 Previewing QML Files You can preview the current QML document in the QML Viewer (Qt Quick 1) or QML Scene (Qt Quick 2). The preview tools enable you to load QML documents for viewing and testing while you are developing an application. To preview the currently active QML file, select \uicontrol Tools > \uicontrol External > \uicontrol {Qt Quick} > \uicontrol {Qt Quick 1 Preview (qmlviewer)} or \uicontrol {Qt Quick 2 Preview (qmlscene)}. \section1 Using External Text Editors You can open files for editing in the default text editor for your system: Notepad on Windows and vi on Linux and \macos. To open the file you are currently viewing in an external editor, select \uicontrol Tools > \uicontrol External > \uicontrol Text > \uicontrol {Edit with Notepad} or \uicontrol {Edit with vi}, depending on your system. \QC looks for the editor path in the PATH environment variable of your operating system. \section1 Configuring External Tools You can change the configuration of preconfigured tools and configure additional tools in \QC \uicontrol Options. \image qtcreator-external-tools.png To configure external tools: \list 1 \li Select \uicontrol Tools > \uicontrol External > \uicontrol Configure. \li Select \uicontrol Add > \uicontrol {Add Tool} to add a new tool. You can also select \uicontrol {Add Category} to add a new category. \li In the \uicontrol Executable field, specify the executable to run. If the executable is found in your system PATH variable, do not specify the path to it. \li In the \uicontrol Arguments field, specify optional arguments for running the executable. \li In the \uicontrol {Working directory} field, specify the path to the working directory. \li In the \uicontrol Output field, select how to handle output from the tool. You can ignore the output, view it in the \uicontrol {General Messages} output pane, or replace the selected text with the output in the code editor. \li In the \uicontrol {Error output} field, select how to handle error messages from the tool. \if defined(qtcreator) \li In the \uicontrol {Base environment} field, select whether to run the tool in the system environment or the \l{Build Environment} {build environment} or \l {Selecting the Run Environment} {run environment} of the active project. Select the build or run environment if the system environment does not contain the necessary PATH settings to find the tool chain, for example. \else \li In the \uicontrol {Base environment} field, use the default settings. \endif \li In the \uicontrol Environment field, select \uicontrol Change to modify environment variable values for build and run environments in the \uicontrol {Edit Environment Changes} dialog. \if defined(qtcreator) For more information about how to add and remove variable values, see \l{Batch Editing}. \endif \li Select the \uicontrol {Modifies current document} check box to make sure that if the current document is modified by the tool, it is saved before the tool is run and reloaded after the tool finishes. \li In the \uicontrol Input field, specify text that is passed as standard input to the tool. \endlist The category and tool are added to the \uicontrol Tools > \uicontrol External menu. If you change the configuration of preconfigured tools, you can later revert the changes by selecting the \uicontrol Reset button. The tool configurations that you add and modify are stored in XML format in the user configuration folder. For example, \c {~/config/QtProject/qtcreator/externaltools} on Linux and \macos and \c {C:\Users\username\AppData\Roaming\QtProject\qtcreator\externaltools} in Windows. To share a configuration with other users, copy an XML configuration file to the folder. */