OpenCV C++ - Windows IDEs

c++, ide, opencv

Solution

Go with Qt Creator. It's a cross-platform IDE for C/C++ development that supports the Qt framework. When you move to Linux/Mac you can continue to use Qt Creator to develop your projects.

It's an IDE that you'll spent a day or two to master, and it will be useful for the rest of your career.

Qt Creator uses a .pro file to configure the project. The instructions on this file are used to build all the Makefiles needed to build the .exe.

This is the .pro file I use to build my Qt Creator projects on Windows/Mac/Linux:

TEMPLATE = app    

SOURCES += \
    main.cpp \
    cvImage.cpp

HEADERS += \
    cvImage.h

## OpenCV settings for Unix/Linux
unix:!mac {
    message("* Using settings for Unix/Linux.")
    INCLUDEPATH += /usr/local/include/opencv

    LIBS += -L/usr/local/lib/ \
        -lopencv_core \
        -lopencv_highgui \
        -lopencv_imgproc
}

## OpenCV settings for Mac OS X
macx {
    message("* Using settings for Mac OS X.")
    INCLUDEPATH += /usr/local/include/opencv

    LIBS += -L/usr/local/lib/ \
        -lopencv_core \
        -lopencv_highgui \
        -lopencv_imgproc
}

## OpenCV settings for Windows and OpenCV 2.4.2
win32 {
    message("* Using settings for Windows.")
    INCLUDEPATH += "C:\\opencv\\build\\include" \
                   "C:\\opencv\\build\\include\\opencv" \
                   "C:\\opencv\\build\\include\\opencv2"

    LIBS += -L"C:\\opencv\\build\\x86\\vc10\\lib" \
        -lopencv_core242 \
        -lopencv_highgui242 \
        -lopencv_imgproc242
}

Problem

I'd like to start using OpenCV for C++ on Windows after a bunch of OpenCV4Android work. From this forum post, it seems that not all C++ IDEs have equivalent capabilities to display OpenCV images, since some do not have an integrated GUI plugin. Are there any differences between IDEs in terms of OpenCV functionality that I should be aware of?

Original source