Extending Qt Creator Manual | Qt Creator API Reference

Extending Qt Creator Manual 4.4.0

# Qt Creator API Reference

The core of Qt Creator is basically only a plugin loader. All functionality is implemented in plugins. The basis of Qt Creator is implemented in the Core Plugin. The plugin manager provides simple means for plugin cooperation that allow plugins to provide hooks for other plugin's extensions.

## Libraries

### Core Libraries

There are a few core libraries used by many parts of Qt Creator.

Library Name | Description
--- | ---
Aggregation | Adds functionality for "glueing" QObjects of different types together, so you can "cast" between them.
ExtensionSystem | Implements the plugin loader framework. Provides a base class for plugins and basic mechanisms for plugin interaction like an object pool.
Utils | General utility library.
QmlJS | QML and JavaScript language support library.

### Additional libraries

Library Name | Description
--- | ---
qtcreatorcdbext | Windows CDB debugger extension

## Plugins

As already mentioned, Qt Creator is basically only a plugin loader framework which gets its IDE functionality through plugins. The most important plugin is the `Core` plugin which provides all the basic functionality needed later to integrate e.g. editors or mode windows.

Plugin Name | Description
--- | ---
Core | The core plugin. Provides the main window and managers for editors, actions, mode windows and files, just to mention the most important ones. This plugin also contains classes necessary to hook into the Locator as well as support for searching text in arbitrary widgets.
ProjectExplorer | The project explorer plugin. Provides base classes for project handling.
Debugger | Debugging functionality.
VcsBase | Base classes for version control support.
TextEditor | This is where everything starts if you want to create a text editor. Besides the base editor itself, this plugin contains APIs for supporting functionality like snippets, highlighting, code assist, indentation and style, and others.