dynamic linking on mac

Hi,

I have successfully compiled some Qt application on a mac and now i want to distribute it.
I am linking dynamically to the Qt library. I followed the instructions given here and it works fine on system that has Qt installed on it. But when i try to execute the application on a system that does not have Qt installed I get the following error.

Quote:

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MyApplication has exited due to signal 5 (SIGTRAP).
[Session started at 2006-12-28 16:46:42 +0530.]
dyld: Library not loaded: libqt-mt.3.dylib
Referenced from: /Applications/MyApplication/Release/MyApplication.app/Contents/MacOS/MyApplication
Reason: image not found

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Can someone please tell me how can I link my application to the Qt library so that it loads dynamically whenever the application wants ?

Thanks a lot.

Everything's here : linking-the-application-to-qt-as-frameworks.

Hint : list your frameworks in a Makefile variable and do something like:

Code:

---

for f in $(QT_FRAMEWORKS); do \
	ditto -rsrc "$(QTDIR)/lib/$$f.framework" ... ; \
	rm debug ... ; \
	rm headers ... ; \
	install_name_tool -id ... ; \
	for g in $(QT_FRAMEWORKS); do \
		install_name_tool -change ... ; \
	done; \
	install_name_tool -change ... ; \
done

---

Be carefull, you'll have to list the framework in the right order (regarding which frameworks they rely on ...). Use otool -L to know which libraries a framework is linked with.

Example :

Code:

---

QT_FRAMEWORKS=QtCore QtXml QtNetwork QtGui QtSql Qt3Support QtOpenGL

---

Here's a shell script I created to do all the Mac deployment dirty work for me, including making a dmg image. The usage is quite simple, all it needs is the name of the Qt application. It assumes makefile use (macx-g++ makespec), but it's a simple matter to adjust it to XCode use. It doesn't handle plugins and multiple executables, but that's not too common.

Enjoy.

Very nice script.

Just be careful with the 'strip' thing: if someone adds plugin support to the script and if the latter take advantage of dynamic lookup, strip will cause lots of problems by removing useful symbols ;-)

This tip may save a lot of time.

Yes, I know about the problems with plugins and "strip". Unfortunately, the Mac produces HUGE executables (even if they aren't universal).