IDE setup

Install Qt Creator and open the VESC firmware project for development.

The VESC firmware repository includes a Qt Creator project for development. The Makefile provides an installer target that downloads and configures Qt Creator automatically.

Prerequisites

Before running the Qt installer, make sure you have Python 3 and pip available. See Prerequisites for installation instructions.

Then install aqtinstall, the tool used by make qt_install to download Qt:

pip install aqtinstall

Install Qt Creator

Run the Qt installer target from the repository root:

make qt_install

This downloads and installs Qt Creator into the tools/Qt/ directory inside the repository. No system-wide Qt installation is required.

All tools installed by Makefile targets are placed under the tools/ directory. The build output goes to build/. Nothing is installed system-wide.

Open the project

1. Launch Qt Creator

   Open the Qt Creator binary installed by the previous step:

   tools/Qt/Tools/QtCreator/bin/qtcreator
   

   On Windows, navigate to tools\Qt\Tools\QtCreator\bin\qtcreator.exe in Explorer and double-click it.

2. Open the vesc.pro project

   Inside Qt Creator, open the VESC firmware Qt Creator project:

   Project/Qt Creator/vesc.pro
   

   Use File → Open File or Project and browse to vesc.pro inside the Project/Qt Creator/ directory.

3. Select your hardware target

   The project defaults to building the 100_250 firmware. To change the target hardware:

   • Look at the bottom of the left panel in Qt Creator.
   • You will find a list of all hardware variants supported by VESC.
   • Select the entry that matches your board.
4. Build the project

   Use the Qt Creator build button or press Ctrl+B to compile the firmware for your selected target.

Changing the hardware target

The hardware target controls which board-specific header and source files are compiled. All supported hardware variants are listed at the bottom of the left panel in Qt Creator.

If your board is not listed, you can define a custom hardware configuration. See conf_general.h and the fw_custom make target described in Build firmware.

You can also build from the command line without Qt Creator at any time using make <target>. Qt Creator is optional and mainly useful for navigating and editing the source code.