[Development] Android port - Why do we need Ministro?

[BogDan]

Hi,

  I have write a few mails on this matter at android-qt mailing list.
Here https://groups.google.com/group/android-qt/msg/854062a719092224 
you can find my reasons why I believe that Ministro is the best solution for 
Android deployment.

I'll do a summary of them:
 - the most important is that qt libs are very big (Qt4 libs are +40Mb for one
platform and most probably Qt5 will be more than that), if you want to target
two platforms (armv5 and armv7) you need to bundle +80Mb of qt libs.
Even more, if you want to use NEON for armv7 and VFP for armv5 you need
to double that size. Ministro downloads the right libs for your platform only once. 
 - android offers no way to install shared libs into its system libs folder, and there
is no read/write location that application can use to store shared libs (obviously,
for security reasons). Ministro solves this problem by using its own home folder
as a central location for qt libs, where only Ministro has read/write permissions
to these libs, the other app have only read-only permission, just like your linux
desktop.
 - statically linking or bundling LGPL libs into your package comes with even more
challenges than the package size, developers *MUST* provide a way to their users
to repack the application with other Qt libs (please check LGPL license on this matter).

Cheers,
BogDan.