[Development] Dropping MinGW support in Qt 6 (Was: HEADS-UP: QStringLiteral)

[Henry Skoglund]

Please, don't drop MinGW, it's in my meaning the best compiler on Windows.

I've switched from VS to MinGW, the #1 reason: I can distribute an .exe 
file which is runnable directly on the user's desktop (no installation). 
This is *verboten* when using VS, you have to send along the 
distribution dlls (ucrtbase.dll etc.) and install them.

Also, big wheels like Qt's installer program (MaintenanceTool.exe) have 
also switched from using Visual Studio to MinGW. I believe for the same 
reason as mine above, except MaintenanceTool.exe didn't include any VS 
.dlls, so on early Windows 10 versions, MaintenanceTool.exe failed to 
start, because no VS2015 runtime was installed.

Nowadays MaintenanceTool.exe only requires the 32-bit MSVCRT.DLL to be 
present, and tbat .dll always gonna be there (just like the VB6 runtime 
etc.)

This is one of the few places where Windows still shines: Qt's OOBE on 
Windows. On that platform, you don't need any chmod +x or waiting for a 
.dmg to unpack, just double-click on the .exe file.

Rgrds Henry



On 2019-08-21 20:35, Mathias Hasselmann wrote:
> Am 21.08.2019 um 19:38 schrieb Thiago Macieira:
>> PPS: can we drop MinGW support in Qt 6?
> What alternative do you propse?
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