You have your GUI application, filling all the list of requirements that the client has requested. All work is set and done, finally it is time to deploy. You promise to your client it won't take long now...
Except... Except that I have been postponing the deploy for the last two weeks trying to accomplish this task, but I couldn't imagine the nightmare it would be to finish the project and release it for the client.
So I have gone through the poor Qt 5.7 Documentation on how to deploy the project, I have tried to build Qt statically with no success, I am trying to dynamically link it but with no success.
I would appreciate the help from some experienced user who could help me step-by-step to either build it statically or dynamically and be able to release the project.
Basically, for my static build, I have tried the following:
./configure -static -prefix=PATH
make
make install
Then I believe I should have a *.a file from here somewhere, but it doesn't happen so far. It takes a hell of a time, but no output can be observed in the working directory.
For dynamically linking, I have gone through ldd appname, copied all the listed libraries to a folder, but now I am running through the issue of building it dynamically with the entire list of dependencies and having them visible for my project (using qtcreator here too, which is making if even more messy for me).
So, as for now, I am lost and running out of time in order to achieve what was supposed to be not such a complicated task. I accept any recommendation that allows me to distribute the project to the client, without having to worry if the client has all dependencies installed.
Related
The problem:
I'm working on continuous integration of a visualization software (C++).
We used to build all dependencies statically, then build the software, test it and ship it.
We recently moved the shipping part to a more rafined approach and want to make the CI closer to what the end user will do, building shared libs is definitely expected from our users.
However, with some or our dependencies, as soon as symbols from libs in question are used, our software crash with 0xc0000409.
This dependencies used to be linked statically and everything was working.
What did I try:
I have uploaded the artifacts and tested them on a local windows machine and it works flawlessly.
I have run dependencies.exe in github-actions and cant find anything wrong with the output (although the output is long and I may be missing something).
I tried running the software using any other way I could think of to get more info about the crash but nothing cames up.
I tried copying all the dll in the same directory to ensure anything from github-actions windows image is not used, but no changes.
As this point I'm stumped and have no idea how to move forward and we are considering just keeping the deps static for now.
What I'm looking for:
Is there a way to ask Windows nicely to give more info about what is not working ?
Maybe a way to use a debugger from the command line, if thats even a thing with visual studio debugger ?
My guess is that a lib used by these dependencies have an issue somehow, or is loading dynamically and is not present. That would explain why it is not an issue when linking statically.
More details:
If you want more info about which lib are crashing, here it is:
VTK linked statically into my software + mesa-dist-win dlls dropped alongside my software: no issue
VTK linked dynamically into my software + mesa-dist-win dlls dropped alongside my software: Issue as soon as I start rendering anything (using mesa)
OpenCascade linked statically into my software : no issue
OpenCascade linked dynamically into my software : issue as soon as I start using opencascade symbols
I'm currently working on a GUI app that is supposed to decrypt some data and print it on the screen, on Windows and Qt (C++) based. The code works fine and I now have to distribute it.
However, the format of the data to decipher can (and will) evolve, and is described on headers (.h) and sources (.c). Therefore, when this happens, I just have to change these files to the last version, the compilation goes fine and the program runs smoothly. It's a simple drag&drop of the new files in my source folder, really.
I am aware of how to deploy a .exe (with the correct dll and so forth), but I don't think it would work in this case. I briefly looked at how to create installers but i'm not sure that this is the right way to handle the situation (http://doc.qt.io/qtinstallerframework/ifw-creating-installers.html).
How could I distribute this code so that people that want to use it can just change the sources, run a script, and the .exe is generated, even with a computer that does not have Qt ? (but probably mingw32 and only on Windows)
Thanks in advance for your help !
From my understanding, you should include dll's and if the format of the data changes, you can just update and maintain your dll's.
Build your project in release mode and then use QTWinDeploy to finalize the build of the project with all the dependencys the projects require for users without QT.
This is how I maintain and distribute a project similar to yours.
Otherwise, I would recommend looking at self-updating programs.
I developed a Qt application in MacBook (El-Capitan 10.11.2) and it is ready now to be released.
What i want now, is to create the standalone executable file for both Mac and Windows OS.
But I don't know how !
I found this link but I am unable to follow it is guidance, it looks different from what my system is showing me.
If you have any idea, please help me.
Thank you
Well, to compile an application for windows, you will need a windows machine (or at least a virtual machine). You can't compile for windows on mac.
Regarding the "standalone": The easy way is to deploy your application together with all the required dlls/frameworks and ship them as one "package". To to this, there are the tools windeployqt and macdeployqt. However, those will not be "single file" applications, but rather a collection of files.
If you want to have one single file, you will have to build Qt statically! You can to this, but you will have to do it on your own. And if you do, please notice that the LGPL-license (the one for the free version of Qt) requires you to make the source-code of your program public! That's not the case if you just link to the dynamic libraries.
EDIT:
Deployment
Deployment can be really hard, because you have to do it differently for each platform. Most times you will have 3 steps
Dependency resolving: In this step, you collect all the exectuables/lirabries/translations/... your application requires and collect them somewhere they can find each other. For windows and mac, this can be done using the tools I mentioned above.
Installation: Here you will have to create some kind of "installer". The easiest way is to create a zip-file that contains everyhing you need. But if you want to have a "nice" installation, you will have to create proper "installers" for each platform. (One of many possibilities is the Qt Installer Framework. Best thing about it: It's cross platform.)
Distribution: Distribution is how to get your program to the user. On Mac, you will have the App-Store, for windows you don't. Best way is to provide the download on a website created for this (like sourceforge, github, ...)
I can help you with the first step, but for the second step you will have to research the possibilities and decide for a way to do it.
Dependencies
Resolving the dependencies can be done by either building Qt statically (this way you will have only one single file, but gain additional work because you will have to compile Qt) or using the dynamic build. For the dynamic build, Qt will help you to resolve the dependencies:
macdeployqt is rather easy to use. Compile your app in release mode and call <qt_install_dir>/bin/macdeployqt <path_to_your_bundle>/<bundle>.app. After thats done, all Qt libraries are stored inside the <bundle>.app folder.
For windeployqt is basically the same: <qt_install_dir>\bin\windeployqt --release <path_to_your_build>\<application>.exe. All dependencies will be inside the build folder. (Hint: copy the <application>.exe in an empty directoy and run windeployqt on that path instead. This way you get rid of all the build-files).
Regarding the static build: Just google it, you will find hundreds of explanations for any platform. But unless you have no other choice but to use one single file (for whatever reason) it would recommend you to use dynamic builds. And regarding the user experience: On mac, they won't notice a difference, since in both cases everything will be hidden inside the app bundle. On windows, it's normal to have multiple files, so no one will bother. (And if you create an installer for windows, just make sure to add a desktop shortcut. This way the user will to have "a single file" to click.)
I’m currently logged onto a machine and my current problem involves a custom build step that has trouble copying a .dll to the Bin directory because Windows says it cannot access the file because it’s currently being used by another process.
I’m able to reproduce this on several other projects. The sequence of events is that I build a release successfully, do some test, checkout another SHA when doing a git bisect, and attempt to build a release from that SHA without doing a git clean -xfd (intentionally, because I’m trying to cache as much reusable data as possible). The weird thing is that I tried to use Process Explorer (procexp) and tasklist /m <locked_dll.dll> to search for whatever is holding onto this dll, and am unable to find anything holding onto the dll. I’m on a non-admin account, and I’m not sure if that is causing Windows to hide certain processes from me. Rebooting the machine helps, but that’s not an acceptable solution since I’m trying to automate things. I’m able to delete the .dll, and when I try to build the project in VS, it’ll complain that it still can’t access the dll when trying to copy it over to the Bin folder. Any ideas? I’m going to keep researching the issue, but as of right now, I’m sort of stumped.
EDIT:
This seems to be a duplicate question (Error: Cannot access file bin/Debug/... because it is being used by another process), but I'll leave this open to see if anyone has found anything new related to the topic.
I've seen this problem in VS 2010 with a large .Net solution with multiple projects in it. Every case I've seen so far pertains to have one project with dependency DLLs that another project also uses, and that other project also uses the first project as a reference, and also uses the same dependency DLLs that happen to be a different version from the first project.
To describe it a different way:
Project A depends on v1 of DLL A
Project B depends on project A and v2 of DLL A
Both project A and B are in the same solution
The solution is to use the same version of DLL A. I usually run into this when upgrading to a new version of SQLite, and I forget to update the dependency in all of my projects.
After talking with a few coworkers, I found the solution to my problem. procexp and tasklist did not see which process was locking the dll because there was no process locking the dll on that particular machine.
I have a hardware configuration where machine A (a host PC) is connected to machine B (acts as a client that retrieves instructions from machine A) using a network switch. machine B runs the same binaries that link to the same dll's. Thus, obviously, running procexp or tasklist on machine A will not see anything locking the dll's because machine B is the culprit.
I have an application that I could deploy on other machines (Visual Studio). I added the module QtMultimedia to use the QSound class.
Wanting redeploy my app, the executable indicates me first that I need Qt5Multimedia.dll then Qt5Network.dll (which I have not added in my project).
Now my application doesn't launch, but no error message, I do not understand ...
I did not find much on the internet.
First of all - use dependency walker to list all the dependencies and make sure you have all the required dlls right besides the binary.
Next, make sure you've copied all the required plugins to the appropriate plugin folder besides the binary. In particulary take a look at plugins/audio/qtaudio_windows.dll, I think you might need to deploy it.
Also a good way to check what you app uses is to use process explorer on the machine you have no troubles on to check all the dlls it uses when the app is running.
I finally found !
First I need to go in the folder of my exe
Then use : "windeployqt.exe ." (whithout the quotes).
That add all I need to execute my exe. :)