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

[Henry Skoglund]

Aha, sorry for my ignorance! Yes, Thiago wrote about the -static-runtime 
option yesterday, I have to try it out (perhaps also wait for that 
update 16.0 to MSVC2017, when it supposedly has less static-flavored bugs)

Rgrds Henry
P.S. Recently I uninstalled Visual Studio from all my machines, guess 
it's time to say:
"Come back Microsoft, everything is forgiven, your linking ability is 
second to none"


On 2019-08-22 07:47, Kai Köhne wrote:
> > Anyway, my ultimate goal is to create and distribute my Qt apps the same
> > way as Qt's installation program (you can tell I really admire that
> > program a lot :-)
> > i.e. link *everything* statically and build myself a ~ 20 MB humongous
> > .exe file (which only needs msvcrt.dll). And that kind of linking,
> > Microsoft has never supported nor allowed it.
>
> I'm pretty sure the Qt Installer / MaintenanceTool is actually built 
> with MSVC 🙂
>
> Microsoft supports linking in a static version of the visual studio 
> runtime library  by the /MT compiler flag. Qt will automatically do 
> this for you if you configure it with |||-static-runtime |.
>
> Kai
> ------------------------------------------------------------------------
> *From:* Development <development-bounces at qt-project.org> on behalf of 
> Henry Skoglund <henry at tungware.se>
> *Sent:* Wednesday, August 21, 2019 9:36 PM
> *To:* Elvis Stansvik <elvstone at gmail.com>
> *Cc:* Qt development mailing list <development at qt-project.org>
> *Subject:* Re: [Development] Dropping MinGW support in Qt 6 (Was: 
> HEADS-UP: QStringLiteral)
> Yes, I also used app-local deployment, problem is that Microsoft has not
> committed 100% to allow it (as far as I know), instead they have a
> seesaw approach, saying "you can temporarily use app-local deployment 
> but.."
>
> Anyway, my ultimate goal is to create and distribute my Qt apps the same
> way as Qt's installation program (you can tell I really admire that
> program a lot :-)
> i.e. link *everything* statically and build myself a ~ 20 MB humongous
> .exe file (which only needs msvcrt.dll). And that kind of linking,
> Microsoft has never supported nor allowed it.
>
>
> On 2019-08-21 21:22, Elvis Stansvik wrote:
> > Den ons 21 aug. 2019 kl 20:52 skrev Henry Skoglund <henry at tungware.se>:
> >> 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.
> > Why not just ship those DLLs? I wouldn't call that "verboten"
> > (forbidden), just a bit more to do for deployment.
> >
> > We do app-local deployment (putting the DLLs next to our application),
> > which is still supported, and makes it possible for us to deliver a
> > portable ZIP in addition to an installer. You don't have to go the
> > route of launching the redistributables installer.
> >
> > To make it less inconvenient we use CMake's
> > InstallRequiredSystemLibraries module along with setting
> > CMAKE_INSTALL_UCRT_LIBRARIES to make sure the Universal CRT DLLs are
> > also bundled.
> >
> > Elvis
> >
> >> 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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