This document is for creating your own custom image-format plugins for Perforce Visual Client "P4V" version 2008.2.

Following prerequisites :

	Microsoft Visual Studio 2005/2008

You will need to download the following version (4.4.2) of Qt SDK which is available from www.trolltech.com.

	qt-win-opensource-src-4.4.2.zip

Another useful tool to download is Qt Creator, which has an IDE and the ability to compile Qt projects.

	qt-creator-win-opensource-1.1.1.exe

Once you have downloaded the SDK, unzip it to any location you desire (I used "C:\Qt\4.4.2").

This is a good point to install Qt Creator. Just do the default install (nothing special).

At this point you need to configure Qt to the target build environment.

Follow these steps:

1.	Launch the Visual Studio 2005 or 2008 command prompt located 
	at Start->Microsoft Visual Studio 200x->Visual Studio Tools->Visual Studio 200x Command Prompt.  
	
	Basically this runs the vars32.bat file and sets up all the environment variables to execute Visual Studio tools.

2.	From the Visual Studio command prompt go to your install Qt folder, i.e. "C:\Qt\4.4.2\qt".

3.	Execute the "configure" program with the following parameter "-no-stl", with no quotes.  
	This is very important because it will construct a build key that the Perforce client will use to evalute any valid plugins.
		
		>configure -no-stl

4.	This process will take some time to configure the entire SDK.

5.	To verify that you have configured the SDK correctly, check the following: 

		Open file:  <qt\src\corelib\global\qtconfig.h>

		The build key should be:  #define QT_BUILD_KEY "Windows msvc release full-config no-stl"

6.	Once configure is complete you can now build the SDK.

7.	From the Visual Studio command prompt run "nmake", this will build/compile the entire Qt SDK, both debug and release versions.

		>nmake

8.	When this process is complete, the sample plugins will work with Perforce.  They are located at "qt\plugins\imageformats" and 
	have the following name construct: qxxx4.dll

Now to build your own plugins you can use 1 of 2 methods.  

Method #1

Launch Qt Creator which hopefully you installed earlier and if not you can install it now.  Once installed, run it.  
The first thing you need to do is setup the Qt version.  This is done under the <Tools->Options> menu.  Navigate to the <Qt> branch and <Qt Versions>.  
Add a new version with the "Plus" button and browse to the Qt install folder, i.e. "C:\Qt\4.4.2\qt".  Next, hit the "Rebuild" button 
and when it is finished select the <Default Qt Version> from the pull down list box.

Now you are ready to use Qt Creator to build existing projects and add new ones.  As an example, go to <File->Open> and browse 
to: "qt\src\plugins\imageformats" and open <imageformats.pro>.  This is the project file for the image format plugins.  Once loaded you 
can just <Build->Build All> to recompile the project.  Make sure <Release> is selected under <Build->Set Build Configuration>. You can even 
add new projects to this project file and compile/build them.

Method #2
Launch Visual Studio 200x and File->Open->Project/Solution and browse to: <qt\src\plugins\imageformats>.  Open the <imageformats.sln> solution which 
contains all the plugin projects.  Just compile "Release" to get the right plugin version to use with P4V client.  The output files will be in the 
standard locations, "Debug" and "Release" under the project file location and also the "qt\plugins\imageformats".

Qt also has one more additional download which makes life a little easier.  It is the Visual Studio add-in which creates project using the project wizard.

That's it.