Add compilers

You can develop Qt applications on several 32-bit and 64-bit platforms. Usually, you can build Qt applications on each platform with GCC, a vendor-supplied compiler, or a third party compiler. In Qt Creator, a kit specifies the compiler and other necessary tools for building an application for and running it on a particular platform.

Qt Creator automatically detects the compilers that your system or Qt Online Installer registers and lists them in Preferences > Kits > Compilers.

Re-detect compilers

When Qt Creator finds an x86_64 GCC compiler, it sets up an instance for the native x86_64 target. If you plan to create also 32-bit x86 binaries without using a dedicated cross-compiler, select Auto-detection Settings > Detect x86_64 GCC compilers as x86_64 and x86. Then select Re-detect to refresh the list of automatically detected compilers.

To remove manually added compilers, select Remove or Remove All.

Add C or C++ compilers

To add a C or C++ compiler:

1. Select Preferences > Kits > Compilers.
2. Select Add to add a new compiler or Clone to add another version of the selected compiler.
3. Select a compiler in the list.
4. Set preferences according to the selected compiler.

Supported compilers

You can add the following compilers to build applications by using other compilers or by using other versions of the automatically detected compilers.

The emscripten compiler is toolchain for compiling to WebAssembly.

Bare-metal compilers

In addition, the Qt Creator Bare Metal Device plugin supports the following compilers.

Troubleshoot MinGW compilation errors

If error messages displayed in Compile Output contain paths where slashes are missing (for example, C:QtSDK), check your PATH variable. At the command line, enter the following commands:

where sh.exe
where make.exe
where mingw32-make.exe

If these commands show paths, they have been added to the global PATH variable during the installation of a toolchain based on Cygwin or MinGW, even though this is against Windows conventions.

To keep working with the third-party toolchain, create a new shell link that adds the required paths (as Visual Studio and Qt do). The shell link must point to cmd.exe:

C:\Windows\System32\cmd.exe /K C:\path_to\myenv.bat

where the /K parameter carries out the command specified in the bat file.

Create the myenv.bat file at path_to, which should be in a convenient location. In the file, specify the paths to the toolchains. For example,

set PATH=C:\path1;C:\path2;%PATH%

where path1 and path2 are paths to the toolchains.

Finally, remove the paths from the global PATH, reboot the computer, and run the where commands again to verify that the global PATH is now clean.

You can use the shell link to run the tools in the third-party toolchains.