Has anybody ever able to deploy qt application?

[dramsey]

Well, using "mingw32-make clean" does indeed clean out the intermediate files. Trying to use qmake initially got me the QMAKESPEC not defined message, but I figured that out, too.

Now, though, both "qmake -config debug" and "qmake -config release" both return instantly without actually, you know, building anything.

I've used Qt with Eclipse under Linux for some other projects. It was never anywhere near this hard just generating a release. I must be overlooking something painfully obvious, or perhaps the Windows support just isn't there yet...

[squidge]

Hm. But isn't the whole point of the Qt Creator IDE to give me a Qt-aware development environment so I don't have to purchase and muck about with Visual Studio? And if you need third party utilities to build release versions of Qt applications, shouldn't this be spelled out in the "How to deploy at Qt app" document?

You don't need Visual Studio, you only need it if you want to use nmake. GCC is perfectly capable on its own if you don't want to use Visual Studio.

Now, though, both "qmake -config debug" and "qmake -config release" both return instantly without actually, you know, building anything.

qmake builds makefiles, it doesn't build anything else. You need to use your favourite make application to actually do the building. Eg. mingw32-make, or nmake.

Alternatively, you can just use the QtCreator IDE to do all this for you, and then copy the generated exe and appropriate dlls to your distribution directory, then pack up that dir and distribute.

[dramsey]

Alternatively, you can just use the QtCreator IDE to do all this for you, and then copy the generated exe and appropriate dlls to your distribution directory, then pack up that dir and distribute.

You know, I would really, really like to do that, since I am using QTCreator. But the "How to deploy your application" notes online don't seem to know about Creator. Simply trying to run the .exe files it produces results in a seemingly endless list of missing DLLs. Is there a way to get it to grab the DLLs for me, or do I have to search them out myself?

[squidge]

What you need is something like http://dependencywalker.com/

[codeslicer]

I'll explain how I deploy my apps. I use nmake at the moment. First of all, unless you have a commercial license, you can't statically link Qt applications. In addition, statically linking all those examples will take up like 5GBs of your hard drive, because the compiler has to embed all those DLLs like QtCore and QtGui, etc into each example.

You have two options then: use nmake or use mingw32.

If you want to use nmake, first install Visual Studio, then install the MSVC 2008 version of Qt from the Qt downloads page. If you install that in C:\Qt\4.6.2, right click on My Computer, go to Advanced, Environment Variables, and add C:\Qt\4.6.2\bin to your system PATH variable. Then, just download Qt Creator separately from downloads, and if it's not already configured, add C:\Qt\4.6.2\qmake\qmake.exe to the list.

If you want to use mingw32, all you need to do is install the Qt SDK, which does everything for you (I believe). Running Qt Creator and building applications will be automatic.

Once you're ready to distribute your application to others, you need to remember to include the Qt libraries in your installation file. You can check what libraries are required using dependency walker (linked above), because not everyone has the Qt libraries installed on their computer, nor does everyone have the .NET framework installed. If you use the Qt SDK, you just need to package in mingwm32.dll (something like that) and QtGui.dll and QtCore.dll, and any others you used. Also, make sure to rebuild your app for Release so it's smaller. For the installer, I like to use the free HM NIS Edit tool along with NCIS. Just run the wizard for a quick configuration of your setup file.

Good luck!

~codeslicer

[squidge]

First of all, unless you have a commercial license, you can't statically link Qt applications.

Not exactly true. You can statically link Qt applications under the terms of t he GPL license if you don't have a commercial license. This does mean however that anyone can request a copy of the source code, and you must send it to them (or point them to where they can find it).

[Lawand]

General tips for generating Qt static dlls (tested using Qt SDK 2010.01 and 2009.05)
1. Use windows XP
2. Use "Qt Command Prompt" (found in start menu > programs) instead of the regular command prompt
3. Don't build phonon (unless the have installed the SDKs mentioned in Qt for Windows Requirements).

In other words, open up the "Qt Command Prompt" after a fresh Qt installation, then type in:

configure -static -release -no-phonon -platform win32-g++

Then:

mingw32-make

And now, when you build a Qt application, the only dlls required to be shipped are mingwm10.dll and possibly libgcc_s_dw2-1.dll (both found at <mingw-directory>\bin which would typically be C:\Qt\2010.01\mingw\bin). And the size of these two combined together is about 50kb...