I've got a Qt project I've built in Visual Studio 2010 Professional. However, when I run it (in either Debug or Release mode) it asks for a few Qt dll's. It works if I supply the dll's and throw them into System32, but my question is, how do I make it so that all libraries are included in the .exe? I have all of the static libraries I need, I just don't know how to make it so that the app doesn't ask the end user for them.
The correct way is to create a setup program that installs the Qt libraries along with your application. Visual Studio comes with a setup project template that you can use to create your own customized installer easily. Static linking is rarely a good option, for numerous reasons.
However, if you insist on static linking, you'll need to recompile the Qt sources with the -static flag.
A walkthrough is available here for Qt 4.
And if you're using the LGPL version of Qt, make sure you've read the answers to this question and appropriate addressed all legal concerns with your deployment.
Related
I have written windows gui application using qt and i want to deploy it.Now when i place .exe to other PC it shows error which says that qt5core.dll and etc required.I can install this dll,but is it possible to run exe app with qt without qt's dll as one file?So i can for example give .exe to my friend and he can instantly run it without installing .dll?
Basically, if you want a single exe file, you probably mean static linking.
The legal commercial version makes it possible or if I am not wrong, you will have to build a static qt version.
In the latter case, you will have to provide the source code of your application.
I do this sometimes, but you'll have to be careful with the license requirements: if you go with GPL, it should be OK, if you choose LGPL, it may be a bit less simple. No idea about the commercial version.
What you must do is building Qt statically, and then use that Qt build to build your application. I had a good experience with mxe. MXE builds an entire crossbuild environment and allows you to build your big Qt exe statically. I used it on Mac OS and Linux to build static executables for Windows, but you can probably run it on WSL. It takes a bit to compile, but it is simple to use. Please note that it cannot be used if your app needs QtWebEngine as it won't build with mingw.
Another simpler option is to create an installer. The Qt installer framework is simple to use. If you include the VS runtime, you end up with a single exe to distribute (the installer).
You always need to include the libraries you use (including your compilers runtime libraries in fact) when you deploy your executable - otherwise how would your application be able to use the code in those libraries? You may be able to statically link some/most things, but rarely everything. Look into how to create an installer / package for your application, so you can bundle up everything as one convenient file.
You can buid you app using QT Static (a large .exe file, no external dependencies)
If you are using LGPL Qt, you must read this:
https://www.qt.io/faq/3.7.-what-are-my-obligations-when-using-qt-under-the-lgpl
Yo can use Qt and static linking, but "The user of your application has to be able to re-link your application against a different or modified version of the Qt library"
You can use an application template like this, very useful for LGPL Qt:
https://marketplace.qt.io/products/qt-lgpl-app-template
I was always using Windows, have very limited Linux experience.
My Visual Studio solution contains 5 C++ projects - 4 of them are static libs, and one is main application (that use these static libs), I want to move it to Ubuntu.
I do not use any windows specific code, so with minor changes I should be abble to compile under Linux.
How to do this? What exactly software should I use under Linux? What should I do with static libs, should I keep using static libs in Linux? How to convert Visual Studio solution to something Linux-like?
upd what if I just download Eclipse in Linux and then file by file, project by project, recreate and copy everything from VC++ to Eclipse? this should work, isn't it? I have just 100-200 files so it's possible to do this by hand.
I can think of two reasonable options. The first one is to create a makefile that will compile everything for you. There was once a utility called Make It So that did this automatically. Their page specifies compatibility with Visual Studio 2010, it might work with Visual Studio 2012 as well.
You can also use cmake. It's a bit more involving to get right, but the end result will be the ability to compile your code more or less anywhere.
Use xbuild? So if you install Mono, then you have xbuild which is the OSS version of msbuild. You can just build your .sln file by something like "xbuild solution.sln"
Clion can generate cmake file automatically for .sln project under linux.
If your code is not dependant on any Window specific library then you can use make the utility to make any lib, bin.
You can also provide different rules to link your library based on your specific requirement. You can also link third party library using Make utility.
I'm totally new in using Qt and I don't know a lot of stuff.
As a test I created a simple application using Visual Studio 2012 and Qt-VS-Add-in based on the newest Qt5.1
After I compiled the application it didn't work for me (gave errors), I searched all over the internet and found a lot of people saying that I have to copy those dlls mentioned below from the directory:
C:\Qt\Qt5.1.0\5.1.0\msvc2012\bin\
DLL's I had to copy to make my application work:
icudt51.dll
icuin51.dll
icuuc51.dll
libEGL.dll
libGLESv2.dll
Qt5Core.dll
Qt5Gui.dll
Qt5Widgets.dll
My problem is the size of these dlls, they're about "37 MB" and my application itself is only "30 KB"! So, those Qt libraries will add at least 37 MB to my application [ Which I don't see it happens with other Qt-based applications I download ]. Is there any solution can make me end up with a single small .exe file?!
And I heard some people saying that I have to also include a dll for Microsoft C++ Compiler, can you explain this for me?
Note: I've come across a lot of questions here on StackOverFlow but I couldn't find anything can help me, so please do not flag this as a duplication because if I found a clear answer I wouldn't post this question!
Any help would be appreciated.
UPDATE: Use windeployqt.exe! It works really well.
http://doc.qt.io/qt-5/windows-deployment.html#the-windows-deployment-tool
The simplest way to use windeployqt is to add the bin directory of
your Qt installation (e.g. ) to the PATH variable and then
run:
windeployqt <path-to-app-binary>
UPDATE: Upon Further testing, windeployqt did not copy over all the MingW dlls for me. (Tested with Qt 5.4 on Windows 10 with MingW 4.9.1). So you need to manually get the last 3 dlls before deploying:
libgcc_s_dw2-1.dll
libstdc++-6.dll
libwinpthread-1.dll
From
C:\Qt\5.4\mingw491_32\bin
I think you may have a few extras in your list... I would double check the docs in the links below...
Here is the definitive documentation on it:
http://doc.qt.io/qt-5/windows-deployment.html
http://doc.qt.io/qt-5/windows-deployment.html#application-dependencies
Size of Qt DLLs
The amazing Qt Libraries can do a lot, but they are kind of big. Some of the older versions of Qt might be a little smaller.
For Qt 4.8 msvc QtCore4.dll is 2.5 MB, and QtGui4.dll is 8.4 MB.
How Windows Resolves Shared Libraries/Dynamic Link Libraries (DLL)
Here is how Windows tracks down a library at runtime:
http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/windows/desktop/ms682586(v=vs.85).aspx
Single Small EXE
If you statically link, then your EXE should grab the libraries it needs and gets built into a stand alone exe. It still may be dependent on msvc redistributables. See the next section for more info on it. But it now compiles down the .libs that you reference into your EXE and your exe no longer is pointing at other dynamically linked libraries. It does take more time to get your statically linked exe environment setup.
Your exe will certainly get bigger as it now includes the binary information for the libraries that you referenced before.
https://www.google.com/search?q=qt+static+linking
EDIT:
Statically building the exe, means that you aren't using the LGPL version.
means that you have to have your object files easy to access to end users if you are using LGPL.
I think #peppe described it well (see comment below):
Technically, you are allowed to statically link when using Qt under LGPL, even if your application is not using LGPL. The only tricky requirement is keeping the ability for a third party to relink your application against a different Qt version. But you can comply with that easily, f.i. by providing a huge object file (.o) of your application, that only needs to be linked against any Qt version.
http://blog.qt.io/blog/2009/11/30/qt-making-the-right-licensing-decision/
Look at the chart near the bottom. If you are doing the commercial version, then you can statically link, without worrying about the object files.
MSVC Redistributables
Redistributable dependencies have to do with the run-time library linker options.
http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/aa278396(v=vs.60).aspx
/MD, /ML, /MT, /LD (Use Run-Time Library)
To find these options in the development environment, click Settings on the Project menu. Then click the C/C++ tab, and click Code Generation in the Category box. See the Use Run-Time Library drop-down box.
These two links below talk about some older versions of visual studio, but the reasoning should still stand.
http://www.davidlenihan.com/2008/01/choosing_the_correct_cc_runtim.html
How do I make a fully statically linked .exe with Visual Studio Express 2005?
Hope that helps.
Just open your terminal execute your_qt_installpath/version/compiler/bin/windeployqt.exe YourApplication.exe. It will automatically copy all the required libs and stuff into the folder, where your exe is located and you can just distribute it.
For Windows you need to include qminimal.dll and qwindows.dll, you will have to put them in folder called platforms.
Even if you program is small you still call huge libraries to do the graphical interface. If the size is really important you should do a console project.
PS : You can check all the libraries you really need by opening your exe with the dependency walker.
I found another workaround without recompiling Qt again!
[ This solution may affect application execution time ]
First we need to use UPX to compress each one of Qt Libraries required by our application, they're often the dll's mentioned in the question. However, avoid compressing them too much because you'll notice that your application takes longer time to run.
[ Optional ]: If your application binary is large, you may find it useful to compress it using UPX.
After compressing all binaries, we want to get a single .exe file, so we can use
Enigma Virtual Box [ http://enigmaprotector.com/en/downloads.html ] to merge all .dll files with the main executable and we'll end up with a single tiny .exe file!
I'll just do it like this for now since I'm not able to recompile Qt with my own configurations on my current machine.
it looks to me that Qt5.2 requires fewer dll.
Qt5Core.dll
Qt5Gui.dll
Qt5Widgets.dll
in windows you also need "qwindows.dll" in folder "platforms".
give it a try.
A possibility for reducing the size of the DLLs is by compressing them with UPX as mentioned by Alaa Alrufaie. Another method is to wrap it into an installer (e.g. Inno Setup). The latter one is particularly useful if you want to distribute it to end users). I had a simple application requiring Qt5Core.dll, Qt5Gui.dll, Qt5Widgets.dll and qwindows.dll (in the folder "platforms") taking about 17 MB. After creating a setup file, it shrank to 5 MB.
I needed SQLite for Win x64 to use in the C++ project in MS VS 2010. And I found this post with the link to x64 build, but it needs .net framework. Can I use in the my project? Also, I am about to use automated building on server side in this project, so it can be a problem to meet additional requirements (does it?).
So, does anyone have a link to precompiled SQLite DLL for x64 or I need to build it from sources? Also, if I am wrong about .net version and it is the one I need, let me know, please.
There is no official precompiled 64-bit Windows DLL of SQLite.
However, compiling it yourself is trivial: just download the amalgamation and add the .c file to your project; there are no additional configuration steps or requirements.
If you do not wish to link the library statically (or compile it directly into your application as suggested in the only answer available here so far), you can use the short tutorial I created recently. The binaries are available there as well if you need them. It uses MS VS 2015. A long time passed since your original question, but maybe someone else can find this useful.
Edit: As somebody stated below, simply providing the link is not enough, so just briefly the basics of the tutorial: You have to download the amalgamation source code from the original SQLite page and you can compile dll from it in your visual studio, but crucial is to set proper pre-processor directives for the compiler:
SQLITE_ENABLE_FTS4=1
SQLITE_ENABLE_RTREE=1
SQLITE_ENABLE_COLUMN_METADATA=1
SQLITE_API=__declspec(dllexport)
Especially last one is the one which makes your library usable. This information is not mentioned in the original instructions for building the library from the sources using the Microsoft toolchain.
I believe I have too dynamically link my program. How do I link my program too QT and then install it by an nsis installer, on Windows? Do I use QMake?
Just ship your program with the Qt dll's you have used - assuming you have made no changes to the Qt source.
On linux you can assume they have the correct dlls or will get them from their distribution's repository automatically with the dependencies checker.
On windows you really need the Dlls for the same compilers so it's safer for you to include them.
If you have changed the Qt source for your own needs then you need to offer the new Qt source to any of the downloaders - otherwise just a note pointing them at qt.nokia.com would be enough.