Qt on Windows - What is your experience?

[agarny]

Hi, I am currently developing my application on Windows, Linux and Mac OS X. On Windows, I use MinGW 4.4 which is shipped with the Qt SDK. Two main reasons to this really: 1) it's very easy to set up my Qt environment on Windows, and 2) I use only one compiler across the different platforms that I want to support (thus avoiding any possible issues between MSVC and GCC).

Still, I use (the binaries of) a third-party library which, on Windows, is built using either MSVC or the latest MinGW (i.e. not the one shipped with the Qt SDK). I use the latter, but this is causing me problems.

So, I was wondering what you guys' experience is with regards to Qt on Windows? Should I (try to) stick to GCC or would it be in my interest (?!) to switch to MSVC?

Cheers, Alan.

PS: according to http://doc.qt.nokia.com/latest/supported-platforms.html, it would seem that Qt's Windows support is primarily on MSVC, even though I would imagine that GCC support on Windows is considered inherent because of its use on Linux and Mac OS X?

[AndyBrice]

I have been developing PerfectTablePlan software for about 7 years on Windows and Mac. I never saw any reason to switch from MSVC to GCC on Windows.

I find it is actually an advantage to use 2 different compilers, as often one compiler will give a helpful warning when the other doesn't. Also a bug that causes a hard-to-find intermittent crash with on compiler might crash every time with the other compiler - allowing you to fix the bug much quicker.

The downside is that you won't be able to use a whizzy new C++ 2011 language features until they are supported by both compilers.