I would like to add for anyone looking at this question from now on that now you can compile and add one package from your catkin workspace as a project in Qt. With the new catkin_tools package there is no top level cmake file and therefore no symlink issue.

• To setup your project you first need the catkin tools package. I installed this with apt-get as follows sudo apt-get install python-catkin-tools There are some differences between the tools package and the catkin_make your used to (now its catkin build) but ill leave it to you to read the docs.

• You will need to reinitialize your catkin workspace. I found that you can just reuse an existing workspace but I I'm not sure if it will cause me issues down the road. First clean your workspace ie delete build and devel. Then run catkin init and it should inherit the configuration from the original workspace. You should see that it is Extending /opt/ros/indigo or similar. If not you'll have to add it. (See:Workspace Chaining)

That should be it for catkin_tools. Now you can build with catkin build instead of catkin_make or clean with catkin clean -a

The rest of the steps are almost identical to @Jose Luis Blanco except that when adding the project add the CMakeLists.txt of the package its self and set the build folder to ws/build/your_package instead of ws/build as before. (See: ROS IDEs)

Also there is another tutorial out there similar to Jose's but has the build settings as follows ../src -DCMAKE_INSTALL_PREFIX=../install -DCATKIN_DEVEL_PREFIX=../devel if you have that remember to remove the ../src

I wrote a short tutorial on this (and also on using CodeBlocks, but QtCreator seems much more responsive).

In short:

• Replace the src/CMakeLists.txt symlink with an actual file
• Open qtcreator from the console.
• File -> “Open File or project…“, then pick ~/catkin_ws/src/CMakeLists.txt and set the build dir to ~/catkin_ws/build/

• Select the tab Projects -> Build Settings and add these CMake arguments:

  -DCMAKE_INSTALL_PREFIX=../install -DCATKIN_DEVEL_PREFIX=../devel

• Close & reopen qtcreator (from a console where you sourced ROS setup.bash!) to make sure it generates the project.

• Ready to go!

Very similar to what @Jose Luis Blanco had mentioned. A simple tutorial is here which worked for me

http://myzharbot.robot-home.it/blog/s...

--------------------- How to open a catkin package in QT creator --------------------

1. create the pkg

catkin_create_pkg <package name=""> [depend 1] [depend 2] [depend 3]

1. catkin_make --source .

to make build, devel and CMakeLists.txt file

1. source ./devel/setup.bash

2. 1. remove the CMakeLists.txt in the folder u have catkin package (not the one inside the package)

3. go to opt/ros/hydro/share/catkin/cmake

copy "toplevel.cmake" to the folder u have package

1. Rename it to "CMakeLists.txt"

copy the following lines @ the end of this file:

#Add all files in subdirectories of the project in

a dummy_target so qtcreator have access to all files

FILE(GLOB children ${CMAKE_SOURCE_DIR}/) FOREACH(child ${children}) IF(IS_DIRECTORY ${child}) file(GLOB_RECURSE dir_files "${child}/") LIST(APPEND extra_files ${dir_files}) ENDIF() ENDFOREACH()

add_custom_target(dummy_${PROJECT_NAME} SOURCES ${extra_files})

1. open a QT (go to QT folder and run the file) from a terminal that u've sourced the setup.bash file

2. In QT creator ... open project -> go to the folder of a package -> open "CMakeLists.txt"

3. Build Location: choose "build" folder from the folder of a package

4. Run Cmake : -DCATKIN_DEVEL_PREFIX=../devel -DCMAKE_INSTALL_PREFIX=../install -DCMAKE_BUILD_TYPE=Debug

12.