I use Visual C++ 2008 with Visual Assist and Qt Creator with MinGW:
- MinGW will drive you nuts, but thankfully you can use the VC++ compiler in Qt Creator.
- The debugger integration is not as good as VC++. You can't set the next instruction or do any of the fancy stuff like see what a function has returned in the locals window. GDB is as slow as a snail.
- Code navigation is as good as VA X (but use the tech preview, 1.2.1 is not that great)
- Code completion is acceptable, certainly not as good as VA X. Code completion doesn't work for anything a bit more complicated such as accessing the members of a const_iterator from a QList typedef.
- Lighter IDE than VC++ and has a nicer GUI IMO.
- .pro files are generally easier to manage than sln
QtCreator is a good alternative to VC++ and I would definitely use it on Linux.
If you already have VC++ 2005 or 2008 and VA X, I recommend that you install the Qt addin and use VC++ for development. I also recommend that you install the Qt SDK side by side and compile in both MinGW and VC++ to catch cross-platforms issues early!
Try to keep the .pro files in sync to the sln and beware of this issue.
