For a particular project, QtCreator stores information about the build configurations for each kit that project uses in its *.creator.user
file. Some kits are automatically detected; kits can also be manually defined by going to Options-->Build & Run-->Kits
and selecting Add
. However, I can't figure out where QtCreator actually stores information about available kits. Deleting all *.creator.user
files that make use of a particular kit does not remove the kit from the list of kits, and I can't find the names of any custom kits I've defined anywhere in the Qt folder on my computer (I'm using Qt5 RC2, so I'm looking in Qt5/QtCommercial5.0.0-rc2/Tools/QtCreator/share
and subdirectories thereof). Any suggestions?
Asked
Active
Viewed 1.2k times
12

Kyle Strand
- 15,941
- 8
- 72
- 167
1 Answers
26
The SDK stores a set of files in $CREATOR_INSTALL_DIR/share/QtProject/qtcreator
. These are used by everybody using this instance of creator.
The user-specific files are in your home directory in ~/.config/QtProject/qtcreator
(or %APPDATA%/QtProject/qtcreator
on windows, don't know about Mac).
The kits are in a file called profiles.xml
(I first called this whole thing profiles, but since that conflicts with the .pro
-files qmake
uses it got renamed). Toolchains are in toolchains.xml
, Qt versions in qtversions.xml
.
The .user
-files only contain data for the project it is related to. Basically everything set in "Projects" mode ends up in the .user
file.

n611x007
- 8,952
- 8
- 59
- 102

Tobias Hunger
- 1,591
- 1
- 10
- 10
-
Thank you! Is this the only place that kit information is stored, though? I only see the auto-detected kit there, but I still see other kits (that I thought would be deleted by deleting my `.user` file) in the project view. – Kyle Strand Dec 21 '12 at 16:15
-
Yes, these are the only two places. The SDK writes its config files into the Qt creator installation directory and creator then later copies those into the user files in your home directory and adds your manually configured kits there. – Tobias Hunger Dec 21 '12 at 16:26
-
@TobiasHunger conflict? in speech you mean? you wrote this? cheers! – n611x007 Jan 22 '17 at 00:25
-
btw. I'm looking for a `PE.Profile.Name` with `cpp` is it from trolltech? I don't know how it came to be I only have `Desktop` here. – n611x007 Jan 22 '17 at 00:32
-
1Saved my day! Just removed the settings folder to run QtCreator as a fresh copy. – Viet Apr 11 '17 at 16:53
-
As of late 2021, you can find SDK files under ```$CREATOR_INSTALL_DIR/share/qtcreator/QtProject``` – YoungerDryas Nov 14 '21 at 12:17