I'm a junior programmer. I have developed a Visual Studio C++ project with a fair amount of dependencies: Boost, a fingerprint recognition library and Windows Biometrics Frameworks. As for today I know the Windows Biometric Framework can be downloaded from the standard Windows Update and I am not concerned about that, to my knowledge, the application is ready to search and link WBF dependencies on the computer by itself.
My concern is: which is the easiest (not most efficient, I need speed here) way to pack the executable file with all the resources and dependencies this .exe needs (Boost and the fingerprint recognition SDK) so that I can minimize distribution troubles, i.e this dll is missing, please reinstall the application, and things like that, without having to compile everything in the client's computer?
I've been able to see a couple ways here: copy the dlls listed in the project config, change to static linking... but I don't know if that is the simplest way. I have little to no trust in my abilities for this and those methods seem quite manual, wondering if there might be an automatic way for doing these things?
I'm not familiar with the fingerprint library or WBF, but most of Boost resides in headers so its compiled in when you compile your application. Some, like the threading library and system specific calls(e.g. getting CPU core count) are libraries that are statically linked to.
What format of the fingerprint library is provided? Dynamically, there would be at least a .dll with a corresponding import .lib file. Your application links statically to the importer after compiling, and binds to the library during run time. Or the library can be included in one large, single .lib that's linked to your application after its compiled. If you have both options available and you only want to distribute the binary file, use static linking.
Like in any systems, you will need to include every .dll libraries your app links and every external resources(images, config files, ...) your app uses. I usually make my Windows distributions by using http://www.jrsoftware.org/isinfo.php.
Very easy to use.
Related
I am pretty new to c++. At the moment I am working on ONNX involving project and I have a question, if I have to make my application portable (assuming that person which will be using it does not have installed onnx on their machine) do I have to install whole library in my
project folder or how should I do it?
Thanks for help
So one option is to link all your libraries statically, so the person using the application does not need to have a particular library installed on their machine
See this Q/A :
Compiling a static executable with CMake
I recommend setting up a CI machine where these libraries are available (or better yet with a reproducible installation script/container configuration) (yes this represents some work to set up for you) and then giving the statically linked binaries buit on this machine to your clients (so no hassle for them).
You'll read online about potential compatibility issues with statically linked binaries and complaints about exe size (some people believe -static is evil), but honestly this approach puts the least strain possible on client configuration.
A little background --- I'm a fairly inexperienced programmer, and I just started my first coding job at a small business that uses a pretty limited development platform to create touchscreen bar/casino games. The IDE was designed to be used in Ubuntu, but for whatever reason some of our developers use a Windows port.
Anyway, I wrote a plugin (shared library, .so file) which allows our Linux programmers to play MIDI files using the Fluidsynth API (software-synthesizer). I'm trying to write an equivalent .dll file for our Windows programmers, but I'm not very familiar with the environment.
I've spent some time playing with Microsoft Visual Studio, and I'd like to make sure I have a basic understanding of how its static/dynamic libraries and object files work before I dig too deep. Here are some of my impressions, please confirm that my noob self is on right track.
1) A .obj file in Windows is equivalent to a .o file in Linux.
2) A .lib file in Windows is equivalent to a .a file (static library) in Linux.
3) A .dll file in Windows is equivalent to a .so (shared/dynamic library) in Linux.
4) A compiled header is not strictly required when linking objects/libraries.
5) Linking against a .dll requires the use of some import library .lib, which isn't the case in Linux. Why?
6) A "Release" build in VS gives me the same functionality as a "Debug" build, minus some debugging features with which gives the former a smaller size.
Thanks in advance!
I'm struggling to deploy my Qt/C++ application, probably because I have not found a good introduction about this online. In brief my question is how do I setup an installation framework which requires only minimal, or preferably no, compilation before shipping to users.
I want to deploy the GUI to users on different platforms, who may or may not have admin rights on their machines. I have found different options:
Statically compile Qt -> statically compile an executable -> distribute the executable. With this setup I have encountered a Windows security warning, which requires admin privileges (I have not yet tried on Linux / macOS). And frankly this approach seems sub-optimal, as my compiler has no idea about how to compile optimally for my users.
Create an installer. But there I start to be confused... Do I need to provide a statically compiled executable of my GUI, or just of the installer, or neither? Or can I avoid pre-compiling on my side all together by using an installer from Qt with built-in compiler/libraries?
With this setup I have encountered a Windows security warning
You didn't sign the binaries. This issue has nothing to do with Qt. You'd face it even when distributing a trivial "Hello World".
Ensure that you sign all of the following:
The executables.
All DLLs that you redistribute and are not signed (verify each one).
The installer.
my compiler has no idea about how to compile optimally for my users.
Since C++ doesn't use just-in-time compilation, this statement is a truism. When you dynamically link your compiler will also have "no idea" how to compile "optimally for your users" if you imply that you need CPU-specific variants of your code. This has to be addressed by having multiple executables, each compiled for a particular CPU, and selecting them on installation. I don't think you meant that, though. But then I have no idea what you mean by "compile optimally for my users".
Do I need to provide a statically compiled executable of my GUI
It's up to you. If you don't provide a statically compiled executable, you will need to provide all of the dependencies: the C++ runtime of your compiler, and all the libraries and plugins needed by Qt.
The procedure for producing a statically linked executable on Windows, Linux and OS X is identical. You start with a statically configured copy of Qt (configure -static -static-runtime), then build it, and then use that to build your application. The end product will be statically linked against C++ runtime and Qt libraries.
Do I need to provide a statically compiled executable of [...] the installer
Only if you compile the installer program yourself using a C++ compiler. Most installer generator packages take care of creating an installer that has no additional dependencies, i.e. you can run it on a bare Windows system.
can I avoid pre-compiling on my side all together by using an installer from Qt
Qt provides no pre-built installers for re-use.
You can use e.g. NSIS to deploy the compiler runtime, Qt libraries and plugins, and your application and any data files it needs.
Or you can statically compile your application so that it has no dependencies and is a single .exe file, and have it as a portable application. It could also self-install, i.e. you could bundle the installer within the application, and on startup the application could detect whether it's already installed, and if not it'd relaunch itself in administrative mode and perform the installation.
Obviously you need to build your application on each platform you want to distribute it to. Easiest way is to link all the QT libraries dynamically to your application. After that all you need to do is provide your application (as in exe file on windows, or executable on linux etc) and the QT libraries you used (DLLs on windows, SO file I think on linux etc)
For example (on windows) if your app is called MyApp and uses QTGui, QTWidgets and QTNetwork, then you have the following files to distribute:
MyApp.exe
QTCore.dll and few other DLLs needed called icu*.dll something, can't remember)
QTGui.dll
QTWidgets.dll
QTNetwork.dll
and you can zip them all in one zip, create an installer etc.
EDIT Few notes after the follow up in the comment.
The standard library (what you called default library that has vector class) is part of the c/c++ runtime (on windows) or installed on linux systems etc, so no, you don't have to worry about this. I can't say for all compilers but for some you can specify a flag/parameter to link this runtime statically (rarely there is a need to do this).
On windows there is a tool called dependency walker, which gives you the list of all DLLs needed for the application to run. On linux systems I don't know, never needed one really. But for your own application, you do know which libraries you need, since you wrote it :)
This is a possible duplicate to this question but the answer is not solving my problem...
I want to use third party software delivered by c++ headers, libraries (.lib) and dlls for a project. Because it will run on a BeagleBone, I am writing this project for Linux. Is there any proper way to link dlls for Linux applications?
Highly unlikely to ever work:
Windows uses a different file-format for executable files (and DLL's are essentially executable files - same for shared libraries in Linux). This means that relocation information and symbol linkage is different.
Even if you manage to load and relocate the DLL, you most likely will need many other DLL's (such as the compiler runtime and system runtime [kernel32.dll for example]) to actually run the application. And of course, those dependent files need to have a correct interface to work on Linux (see #3)
There's nothing stopping a Windows DLL from making system calls directly in the shared library - these won't work in Linux.
Your best choices are:
Request Linux versions from the supplier of those libraries. Depending on what the functionality is, it may or may not be an easy task for the supplier to produce alternatives for different architectures.
Run the application inside the WINE (WINdows Emulator) package.
Run a Windows virtual machine, and run the application inside that.
Write your own replacement libraries, or find others already available out there.
How can i run a program which already has been built and compiled before on Qt IDE, so that i can take that program and run on any computer I want without recompiling it on that computer. I am a beginner so bare answering this question.:)
Thanks
There are a few parts to your problem.
1) You need to compile it for each architecture you want it to be used on.
2) Each architecture will have a set of Qt dynamic libraries associated with it too that need to be available.
3) Some architectures have an easy-to-deploy mechanism. EG, on a mac you can run "macdeployqt" to get the libraries into the application directory. For nokia phones (symbian, harmattan (N9), etc) QtCreator has a deploy step that will build a package for the phone and even include an icon.
4) For systems without such a feature, like linux and windows, you'll either need to distribute the binary and require the user to have Qt available or to package up a directory/zip containing the needed Qt libraries and distribute that.
It doesn't launch because it cannot find the dependencies. As you are on Windows, these libraries can be moved in the same directory as your application. To find which library is missing, use dependency walker
I am pretty sure these libraries are not found:
The Qt dynamic libraries (can be found on Qt bin directory, take the dll)
The C dynamic libraries used for compilation. If you are on creator and use default setting it will be mingw-xxx(can be found in the Qt installation directory, don t know exactly where)
Every Architect has a set of CPU Instructions.
so it's like when you hear a language that you don't understand. like when i speak Arabic To Someone who don't Understand The Language.
Every Architect Has a set of Processor Instructions, The Compiler only convert the code into instruction only understood by The Architecture that your CPU is.
That's Why Python and the most of High level languages Use Interpreter Instead of a Compiler.
But There are some cross compilers like MinGw that Support Cross compiling To Windows (.exe files)
Simply QT Have some libraries important to be in the working directory for your project.