Configuring the project for Windows

Before preparing this project on Windows, let's talk about the available choices when you develop a Qt application on a Windows host. The official Qt website provides multiple binary packages. We are mainly interested in the following:

• Qt for Windows 32-bit (MinGW)

• Qt for Windows 32-bit (VS 2013)

You may already be using one of these versions. The first one comes with a MinGW GCC compiler and the Qt framework. The second only provides the Qt framework and relies on the Microsoft Visual C++ compiler that will be installed with Visual Studio.

Both versions are fine when you want to create a common Qt application for Windows. However, for this chapter, we want to link our filter-plugin-designer project with OpenCV libraries. Qt Designer must also be able to dynamically load filter-plugin-designer, so we must use a consistent compiler version at all stages.

Please note that Qt Creator on Windows is always based on MSVC, even in the MinGW binary package! So if you...