TL;DR: Just set up the "Build" toolchain (configuration) in Qt Creator and point Qt Creator at your target (with the correct ssh user login) for when you click

TL;DR: Just set up the "Build" toolchain (configuration) in Qt Creator and point Qt Creator at your target (with the correct ssh user login) for when you click "Run" or "Debug". http://wiki.qt.io/Raspberry_Pi_Beginners_Guide http://wiki.qt.io/Raspberry_Pi_Beginners_Guide http://wiki.qt.io/RaspberryPi2EGLFS http://wiki.qt.io/RaspberryPi2EGLFS These two tutorials use slightly different setups, so don't get confused on details, but both are great to glean tips from. I've successfully used Qt Creator on both a Linux VM (desktop Intel) and a Windows desktop to build originally-desktop-based Qt projects for embedded Linux on ARM. The projects are not headless, but also do not use X to run the Qt GUI. Instead they use EGLFS. Even if your software doesn't have a GUI, you can still do remote debugging with Qt Creator... or Eclipse, or Visual Studio , or anything that has the proper hooks. I don't think any sane developer would want to use a remote X server to get to an instance of an IDE. As long as you have the proper cross toolchain (some cost $) set up correctly in Qt, and your target code is all included properly (libraries and headers for your target, NOT your dev machine), you should be able to do exactly what you want for any desktop+remote target pair. Additionally you don't even have to work in Linux to target Embedded Linux: https://wiki.qt.io/Visual_Studio_Add-in https://wiki.qt.io/Visual_Studio_Add-in https://blogs.msdn.microsoft.com/vcblog/2016/03/30/visual-c-for-linux-development/ https://blogs.msdn.microsoft.com/vcblog/2016/03/30/visual-c-...