[Development] Why custom installer on Mac, why not using @rpath?

[Adam Strzelecki]

Hello,

This may be a silly question, but why Qt5 is not using Mac native installer packages anymore, but own (unusual on Mac) installer application?

Before in Qt4 there was .pkg installer, that was simply putting Qt frameworks into /Library/Frameworks and rest of the stuff into /Developer. Which is IMHO something that is pretty expected by Mac developer. Of course this could make problem for Qt4 & Qt5 coexests, that's why it is possible to enable specifying different installation target in installer .pkg.

Once of the reasons I can see there's new "qt5.patcher" installer task that simply rewrites all referenced Qt frameworks to their paths using "install_name_tool". This solves the problem when referencing framework, but this is awkward solution.

Why not use @rpath? And make all Qt frameworks to use id of @rpath/QtNAME/Versions/VERSION/NAME, i.e. @rpath/QtCore/Versions/5/QtCore

Anyway pre-built SDKs come in 64-bit flavor on Mac, so they will run need at least Leopard 10.5 where @rpath is supported.

Just to have a reference I've created bug entry for that:

	https://bugreports.qt-project.org/browse/QTBUG-31814

Best regards,
-- 
Adam Strzelecki | nanoant.com | twitter.com/nanoant