Distributing qt applications

**dachick** · 14th November 2010, 15:45

Hi guys,

lately I started developing a small tool with a qt gui. Actually I used qtJambi.

My question is if it is possible to pack the required libraries further. The default qt library for win32 for instance is ~18MB. For a very small tool this seems unreasonable.

Regards

**Timoteo** · 14th November 2010, 16:07

Check out upx.

**alexandernst** · 14th November 2010, 16:22

If you want a small size app don't use qt (nor java, nor any other lib). Code native.

**squidge** · 14th November 2010, 19:31

I don't know what OS your coding under, but under Linux, the size of the library is irrelevant as only one copy is needed and is typically used by other apps anyway.

It only becomes an issue on Windows, where there is no standard library system.

**ChrisW67** · 15th November 2010, 06:10

In my Qt install on Windows the core libraries are QtCore4.dll at 2.3 MB and QtGui4.dll at 9.1 MB for a total of 11.3 MB. When you package them for distribution with something like NSIS and the lzma compression they come down to slightly smaller than 4 MB. Sure they take up the same space when unpacked but they are hardly a major imposition for the utility they provide. They are much smaller than the Java runtime that Jambi will also require on the target machine. To make the installed size smaller see the upx suggestion above.

**dachick** · 15th November 2010, 13:57

thanks for all your answers.

In fact I'm programming on windows and need to distribute mainly to windows.

I'll dig into the upx stuff, thanks for the suggestion.

regards