Use Development Containers

Use Development Containers (dev container) to define and configure a consistent development environment for your project across developers and automated build or test systems.

You can run dev containers either locally or remotely in a cloud for running applications, for separating tools, libraries, or runtimes that you need when working with a codebase, or for continuous integration and testing.

A dev container environment can differ from the deployment environment as they typically include tools and utilities needed during development that are not required for final deployment.

For the full specification and the devcontainer.json file format, see the Development Container documentation.

Configure dev containers

To configure a dev container for Qt Creator:

1. Create a devcontainer.json file in your project directory.
2. Add a qt-creator section under customizations in the devcontainer.json file.
3. Use the customization options described in this topic to customize the dev container.

Customization options for dev containers

The following table shows the available options for customizing Qt Creator in the devcontainer.json file.

Configuration for typical local development

The following example devcontainer.json file shows how to configure the dev container for a typical local development workflow. It enables automatic detection of kits, mounts the libexec directory into the container, and specifies the mount point.

This setup is useful when you want Qt Creator to automatically find available build kits and ensure that required helper tools from the libexec directory are accessible inside the container.

{
    "customizations": {
        "qt-creator": {
            "device": {
                "auto-detect-kits": true,
                "run-processes-in-terminal": false,
                "copy-cmd-bridge": false,
                "mount-libexec": true,
                "libexec-mount-point": "/devcontainer/libexec"
            }
        }
    }
}

Configuration for custom kits and toolchains

The following example devcontainer.json file demonstrates how to configure a dev container when you need to use a specific Qt version, compiler, or toolchain inside the container. This is useful for cross-compilation, supporting multiple build configurations, or ensuring a consistent development environment across teams.

This configuration file disables automatic kit detection and instead defines a custom kit using the kits property. The kit specifies the Qt version, compiler paths, CMake binary and generator, and debugger to be used by Qt Creator within the dev container.

{
    "customizations": {
        "qt-creator": {
            "auto-detect-kits": false,
            "kits": [
                {
                    "name": "My DevContainer Kit",
                    "qt": "/6.7.0/gcc_64/bin/qmake6",
                    "compiler": {
                        "Cxx": "/usr/bin/c++",
                        "C": "/usr/bin/gcc"
                    },
                    "cmake": {
                        "binary": "/usr/bin/cmake",
                        "generator": "Unix Makefiles"
                    },
                    "debugger": "/usr/bin/lldb"
                }
            ]
        }
    }
}