Why is the Windows MinGW SDK download alone 1.5 GB in size?

[jamadagni]

I just visited http://qt.nokia.com/downloads yesterday and it shows 1.5 GB for the Windows full download of the SDK whereas the equivalents on other platforms are less than 700 MB. When I tried the "online" installer http://get.qt.nokia.com/qtsdk/Qt_SDK..._v1_1_1_en.exe, it shows a 1 GB download size for the MinGW version but not for the VC versions. Why is this glaring discrepancy?

[SixDegrees]

Because it includes mingw.

[squidge]

VC versions obviously don't include VC, whereas the full SDK includes minGW, as SixDegrees states. Linux distributions typically include a compiler also, hence why those are smaller too.

[jamadagni]

Hey come on guys, thanks for replying but I don't think this is the correct answer. Are you telling me MinGW compiler accounts for difference of 1.5 GB minus 700 MB = 800 MB? (Actually mea culpa in my previous post for saying that the MinGW version is 1 GB, it is actually 1.5+ GB as said in the thread title.)

Now please see the screenshots from the online installer showing the various sizes reported for MinGW-compiled Qt component, MinGW alone, and VC-compiled Qt component.

[SixDegrees]

Apparently, you haven't taken the time to determine what mingw is or what it does.

Here's a shorter, simpler answer: it's bigger because that's the way it is. And there's nothing you can do about it.

[squidge]

Of course, you could always just download both versions, extract them to different directories, and then see what the difference is yourself...

That would be much better than asking us to guess and then saying "I think your wrong".

[jamadagni]

Apparently, you haven't taken the time to determine what mingw is or what it does.

Yes I do -- I know that MinGW GCC is GCC ported to Windows so that it produces Windows COFF executables rather than Linux ELF executables. I have also myself used MinGW GCC to compile for Windows programs that I initially wrote on Linux.

Here's a shorter, simpler answer: it's bigger because that's the way it is. And there's nothing you can do about it.

Well look, I have been downloading Qt releases even before the Nokia acquisition of Trolltech and the SDK even after said acquisition. For all previous versions there was never such a big size discrepancy between the Linux and Windows/MinGW versions. Likewise there is no such huge discrepancy in the size of my own binaries created using Linux/GCC versus MinGW/GCC. Therefore my question still stands. I don't think "that's the way it is" is an answer to the question.

Of course, you could always just download both versions, extract them to different directories, and then see what the difference is yourself...
That would be much better than asking us to guess and then saying "I think your wrong".

Sorry guys, I didn't mean to offend anybody. As you can see above, I have indeed used MinGW and downloaded previous releases. When in previous releases the discrepancy was not so great and suddenly it is, and the only reason given is that it includes MinGW, I said "I think you're wrong" and I did not intend to offend.

And as for downloading and testing myself, you realize that the whole point of asking this question here is to find out why the discrepancy before downloading to save on bandwidth. Not everybody has unlimited bandwidth, you know.

Again, I apologise if anybody felt offended and I really would like to know why the discrepancy just because this version was compiled using MinGW.

[squidge]

No worries, you didn't offend me, it was (and still is) really the only real way of knowing for sure the reason.

For your information, here is my Qt directory at work (as far as I know, unmodified since the download) :

bin\ 46,827,305 01/04/2011 11:28 ----
lib\ 13,367,349 01/04/2011 11:25 ----
mingw\ 117,922,884 01/04/2011 11:26 ----
pythongdb\ 28,435,172 01/04/2011 11:28 ----
qt\ 1,459,761,983 01/04/2011 11:26 ----
share\ 13,911,015 01/04/2011 11:25 ----
LICENSE 26,940 10/09/2010 10:05 -a--
Qt SDK.url 46 01/04/2011 11:28 -a--
uninst.exe 644,607 01/04/2011 11:28 -a--

So it would seem that the libraries themselves are the largest part, particularly the debug versions (eg. QtGuiD4 is 154MB on its own)

We would need to compare these libraries with the visual studio versions.