Qt creator debug mode is really slow

Question

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My case is I'm using Qt 5.5 with Qt creator 3.5 on a Windows 10 machine. It takes about 10 to 15 seconds to start debugging my project. My project uses quick control. I'm not sure if that is related.

In my Qt creator I can't find CDB debugger. Searching "cdb.exe" in my root disk results in nothing.

My current kit is

• Debugger: GNU gdb 7.8 for MinGW 4.9.2 32bit
• Compiler: MinGW 4.9.2 32bit
• Qt version: Qt 5.5.1 MinGW 32bit

Edit: CPU: Core i7 3.3GHz Ram: 32GB SSD

Is there any workaround or do I need to install CDB and configure it in Qt creator?

Answer 1

When updating to Qt 5.6.1 in a Windows 10 (Redstone) with Visual Studio Professional 2015 (Update 3), I also faced an epic slowness with cdb.exe. The process (cdb.exe) would just hang Qt Creator for 30+ seconds after the build ended and before the debugging started.

If others face such slowness, and had no luck caching the symbols, I would like to share that by downloading the Windows 8.1 SDK , installing only the Debugging Tools and re-opening Qt Creator, I was able to update the kit to the auto-detect 8.1 debugger (cdb.exe) and everything started working properly again.

Answer 2

I have been experiencing very slow debugging with Windows 10 Professional, Qt 5.5.1 and Qt Creator 3.5.1, using CDB. It was pretty much unusable. I discovered that the windows debug symbols take a very long time to load. When I go directly to the windows symbol server, it takes minutes. So, I downloaded the windows symbols from here: Windows Symbol Packages

I installed the symbols then setup the CDB symbol path in Qt Creator. It's very snappy now.

Answer 3

CDB is part of Windows SDK. You can get either Windows SDK 8.1 or Windows SDK 10 for your system. Then follow Qt documentation: Setting Up Debugger .

Answer 4

for CDB Debugger Go to:

Tools >> Options >> Debugger >> CDB Paths

check Symbol Paths and remove server path ( http://msdl.microsoft.com/download/symbols )

Answer 5

I had a horribly slow compilation process with the "straight out of the box" Qt 5.7 with Windows 10.

I fixed that (compilation times divided by 10) by swapping the MinGW toolchain with the Windows one

In Qt Creator, in the Tools/Options/Build & Run, you will need to make sure that the three tabs Qt Versions, Compilers and Debuggers are all set up

Qt Versions need the MSVC2015, that you can get with MaintenanceTools.exe at the root of your Qt installation (C:\\Qt by default)

Compiler needs MSVC C++ 14.0, which I think you get with Visual Studio 2015 (it was already there for me)

Debugger needs CDB, which you get with Windows Kit 10

I installed everything, was sure to add a new kit to my project (Desktop MSVC2015) and poof! Compilation times were gone