[Qt-interest] Deploying apps in MacOS

[Karol Krizka]

On Mon, Jun 1, 2009 at 3:48 PM, Mike Jackson <imikejackson at gmail.com> wrote:
> On 2009-06-01 04:30:56 -0400, Alexandre Courbot <gnurou at gmail.com> said:
>
>>> Yep, but note that macdeployqt takes care only of Qt frameworks.
>>> frameworkdeployqt.pl script can fix dependencies for other frameworks that
>>> depend on Qt. If you have other non-Qt-dependent dynamic libraries, you
>>> would have to deal with them on your own (this includes adding their
>>> dependencies to the bundle as well) - let otool and install_name_tool be
>>> your friends :)
>>
>> Maybe macdeployqt could/should be turned into a more generic tool that
>> allows to embed selected frameworks in addition to Qt? That would make
>> our lives much easier. It's hard to believe that such a tool does not
>> exist yet, still macdeployqt is definitely a great step in the right
>> direction.
>>
>> Alex.
>
> At the risk of being "shot" I'll make the following suggestion: Use
> CMake/CPack for your application. CMake does basically the same as
> qmake. (I'll leave the true differences for somewhere else) but CPack
> can generate all the Platform specific installers for you: NSIS On
> Windows, DMG or .pkg on OS X and rpms on Linux.
>  As far as the Mac Specific answer to the original question, CMake has
> built in functionality to "fix up" the OS X application bundle which
> means CMake will invoke otool for _all_ the non-system dependent
> libraries. So for example one of my applications depends on hdf5, tiff,
> expat and Qt. CMake will copy all those libraries/frameworks into the
> proper location inside the Application bundle then run otool on _all_
> the libraries to make sure it is a true stand alone app bundle. Then
> you can use CPack to create any number of installers for OS X, from zip
> files to DMG files.
>

I use CMake in my Qt project that I'm also running on Mac OS X, and I
keep having trouble trying to get the final result be a bundle instead
of just a simple executable. After reading some of the documentation,
it seems to me that it is still just work in progress? But other than
that, I agree. CPack is very good at creating all kinds of installer
packages (NSIS, RPM, DEB...).

--
Cheers,
Karol Krizka
http://www.krizka.net

>  Just a suggestion.
>
> Now, if macdeployqt were to be updated to include all that same
> functionality then it would become usable to a wider audience.
>
> Mike Jackson
> Principal Software Engineer
> BlueQuartz Software
> www.bluequartz.net
>
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