How do I deal with this situation where the user's machine may not have dll like msvcp100.dll, msvcp100.dll? I don't want to my software not install on user's machine because this kind of error. I've been thinking in either find a tool and copy every single needed dll to the executable file run or try build a static version of Qt (may have sort of same result, in the end). I've seen applications that doesn't provide those dlls and it's up to user to get them, install etc. It may be a issue for those users, finding the right dll matching version and all. I'd like to avoid it.
How is this usually solved in a real world application?
You redistribute them in your installer.
Deployment of Qt apps is an uneasy issue. One should understand that you need to redistribute a compiler's dlls, as well as Qt dlls. For the msvc 2010 compiler you may just put the msvcp100.dll and msvcr100.dll files near your executable file.
As for Qt, the easiest way for windows deployment is to use the windeployqt command prompt util.
Update. How is this usually solved in real applications?
There is no fully automatic tools, which could determine all the dependencies, because the deployment of applications is a complex task. For example, you application can depend on many things such as libraries dlls, compiler's dlls, registry keys, drivers, environment variables, computer reboot requirement, ActiveX/COM components, other installed applications, etc...
But there are tools that can help you in this matter. They can be configured once for target project and then work all the time. This is called Build Automation, another similar concept is a Continuous Integration. As for the creation installation packages for end users, there is a lot of tools such as Nullsoft Scriptable Install System, Inno Setup, Qt Installer Framework, WiX, etc...List of installation software.
the installer script, put a command to download the dll that the application needs to run, and in the application source code, put it to use the dll's ONLY in the folder where it is running
If you are using the NSI installer, use this example
Related
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 have made an allegro simple game . But when I open the *.exe file on another computer it says that there are many missing .dll files . How can I make my game to run on other computers without Visual Studio and Allegro 5 library installed ?
Longer version of my comment:
When you created your application, it links to certain DLL's that exist on your computer. When you distribute your game, you will either need to ZIP the DLL's along with your .exe or package them using package creators and ship it.
The best way to find which DLL's your exe depends on will be to use a tool like Dependency Walker. You don't need to copy absolutely all DLL's that your EXE depends on. Only the ones that you see are in non-standard paths like ones that are not in C:\Windows\System32. That being said, you might need to copy some from C:\Windows\System32. You will need to find that out on your own.
To package them all as a setup, you can use package creators like InnoSetup or NSIS. Otherwise, create a script that ZIPs it all up for you. AFAIK, there is no easy way to get all DLL's required that are missing from the other persons' system. You'll need to find them out by trial and error. It is a pain, unfortunately.
If you downloaded the pre-built binaries, link against the static, monolithic, mt build of Allegro. You'll need to adjust your compiler settings to match (/MT) and add ALLEGRO_STATICLINK to your list of preprocessor definitions.
If you do that, then you only need to distribute your executable file and your resources (images, sounds, etc).
Note that you should have at least two configurations: Debug & Release. When working on your application, you should use the Debug configuration (linking against the regular debug Allegro library). When distributing your application, you should use the Release configuration.
I made a little app and built a release version. Now I want to upload it to my site. I have never done this before with Qt, so I'm unsure as to what I should include along with the binary.
How do I figure out which DLLs should be included with my app? And where do I get them? I'm running Windows, but I'd also like to know what I should do in case I want to release a Linux version.
For windows:
You can use dependency walker to see what Qt libraries (or others) you should ship. This is the depends.exe executable that is included with Visual Studio, but you can download it separately from: http://www.dependencywalker.com/
Load your app into that and it will list out all the modules it expects at runtime. You might also have to ship a Visual C++ Runtime Redistributable compatible with the compiler that you built the executable with (if it's VC++).
Do note that dependency walker does not account for things like Qt's plugins. An example of this would be the QtAssistant system (for help menu-type functionality), which as of Qt4 relies on Qt's sqlite functionality, which is typically built as a plugin (qtsqlite4.dll if I remember).
For Linux:
This is trickier because of wider disparities in Linux distributions. You can of course use the GNU build system if you want to ship source, but if you're shipping binaries, and want to support a variety of distros, you might do best to build packages for each platform you want to release on.
In my past, a company I worked for switched to using cmake and after setting up all the project and build files, used that to generate builds and packages for different OSes. On Windows, this meant hooking in with Inno Setup, and for Unix-like systems, cmake knows how to generate things like installable shell scripts. Definitely made life much easier.
Our QA department would test our software in virtual machine instances of our supported platforms, completely clean, and see if anything was missing.
If you're talking about DLLs, I assume it is about Windows.
Use Dependency Walker to see the DLL dependencies.
Or... take a clean system, with no dev tools installed, and put your executable, try to run it there, and see what DLLs are reported as necessary and inexistent. Put the DLLs near the executable.
For a Linux version, you can either create platform targeted releases of installers for each Linux fork or you can let people compile from source. If your app is new, the only way you get exposure is supply people with readymade installers, the targeted installers. New users loathe compiling packages from source.
You can try debian (.deb) and redhat (.rpm) packages first. These two are extremely popular lines and will let you have a taste of things.
I've got an SDK I'm working on and the previous developer just dropped the DLLs in System32 (Apparently a serious offense: see here)
So assuming I move them out into \Program Files\\SDK (or whatever), how do I make sure that all the apps that needs those DLLs can access them? And to clarify, all apps that access these are doing early (static) binding to the DLLs at compile time so I can't pass the full path to them or anything. They need to be able to find it just given the DLL filename only.
Along the same lines, what about including a particular version of MSVCR80.dll? They all depend on this but I need to make sure they get a specific version (the one I include).
Any ideas?
An SDK is by definition a development kit. It's not a deployment patch...
What this means is that the applications that depend on those assemblies should ship with them and install them into their local \program files.. directories.
The reason for this is let's say you decide to do a breaking change by eliminating an entry point for example. By installing your "SDK", it has the potential to stop older programs from functioning.
You could take a play from the Java handbook and update the PATH environment variable. Whenever a program makes a call to an external assembly it searches along that environment variable until it finds it.
Of course, this could still result in the problem showing up. So your best bet is to just install the SDK into Program Files and let the developers of the products that depend on your toolkit decide whether they want to update their versions or not.
UPDATE
As I'm thinking about this, one last possibility is to GAC your assemblies. In the event you do so, bear in mind that they should be strongly named and properly versioned so as not to step on each other. I don't recommend this route because it hides the actual locations of the assemblies and makes uninstalling a little more difficult then simply hitting delete on your directory.
I can't tell you about your own DLLs, but you should never redistribute Microsoft DLLs alone.
You always have to use Microsoft Redistributable Package.
For example, if your application depends on dll from Dev Studio 2005 SP1, you should redistribute your application with Microsoft Visual Studio 2005 SP1 redistributable. The same applies to 2008. MS provide MSI based installer and Merge Module to include in your own product installer.
You are asking about "DLL Hell", something I had thought every Windows developer was familiar with. The order of search for DLLs is:
the directory the exex that calls them was loaded from
the current directory
various Windows directories (as discussed in your previous question)
directories in the PATH variable
As the Windows directories should be ruled out, that leaves you with three options.
You can put your install path in the search path, which will allow the applications to find them.
Alternatively, you can deploy the DLL's into the same directory as the application that depends on them.
I believe the first is better from an SDK perspective - it'll make development easier. But I think the second is better for when the application gets deployed to end-users, unless you expect there may be many consumers on a single system so the disk and memory footprint of having copies of the DLL are prohibitive.
If you can't install the dlls into the same directory as the exe using them you could append your directory to the PATH environment variable.
You don't say which version of Windows you're using, as the details are slightly different from what I remember.
You could also put your version of MSVCR80.dll in the same folder. However, you'd have to ensure that your folder was before the system one on the path otherwise the linker would pick up the "standard" one first. However, if you adopted the "local" dlls approach then you wouldn't have this problem as Windows searches the local directory first and so will pick up your version of MSVCR80.dll.
Is your version the latest or a previous version? You might be better off getting your app to work with that version or later and then allow the users to update their machines as required. This also illustrates why you should never mess with the dlls in \Windows or \Windows\system32 as, as others have pointed out, you could break other applications by changing the version of this dll.
When I run the program from IDE (VS2008) it works perfectly. When I want to launch it from Windows Commander it doesn't work because it needs DLL that wasn't found.
Used both debug and release builds.
Make sure the Qt DLL's are in your PATH. Two simple solutions are:
Copy Qt's DLL's to your EXE's directory.
Copy Qt's DLL's to %WINDOWS%\System32 (e.g. C:\WINDOWS\System32) (possibly unsafe, especially if you install another versions of Qt system-wide. Also, requires administrative privilages).
You should make sure that the DLLs needed by the executable (probably QT Dlls) are in the PATH or in the same directory as the executable. You can find which dlls are needed by using depends.exe
another solution would be to place path to qt bin subdir in VS tools->options->projects and solutions->VC++ directories.
You could link it statically with all the libraries it needs. Saves messing around with DLLs and stuff. On the down side, you can't update DLLs on your installed PCs to get updated/improved/fixed functionality, and will need to rebuild and redeploy.
So whether or not this is viable depends on what your installation targets are - a few PCs controlled by you, or every man+dog who decides to download your program?
Statically compiling in a library bug (security hole for example) and shipping that to your clients would be very poor form. Doing the same on a secure corporate intranet may make it worth doing just so that you know that each install is running exactly the same.