[Qt-interest] How to create a custom Qt Installer from VS compiled Qt.

[Michael Jackson]

On 3/10/10 1:09 PM, in article 4B97E05C.70705 at thesmithfam.org, "Dave Smith"
wrote:

> Michael Jackson wrote:
>> I would like to distribute a custom built Qt ( I don't need qt43
> support,
>> QtWebkit, SQL Drivers and a few other things) in self contained installer
>> that supports installing Qt to where ever it is the customer wants. I Have
>> customers that can NOT write to their "C" drive at all. I have customers
>> that don't have admin privs and so need a local install in their home
>> directory. I can certainly build Qt but the folder bloats up to over 2GB in
>> size where as the installer from Nokia is only a few hundred MB in size.
>> That is what I want.
>> 
>> 
>> Thanks, I'll take a look at InstallAnywhere prices.
> 
> I think you want NSIS. I believe that's what the Qt install uses (just
> based on how it looks, no real data).
> 
> That's what I use to distribute my Qt /apps/, but I've never distributed
> re-built Qt binaries myself. However, I think that NSIS would be the
> easiest and cheapest way to do that.
> 
> --Dave

I was looking through that and the problems occur pretty quick. Looking at
the installer.ini (located in tools/installer/NSIS in the qt source
distribution**) there is the following:

!ifndef OPENSOURCE_BUILD
!include "modules\msvc.nsh"
!include "modules\addin7x.nsh"
!include "modules\qsa.nsh"
!include "modules\addin60.nsh"
!include "modules\debugext.nsh"
!include "modules\license.nsh"
!include "modules\vsip.nsh"
!include "modules\help.nsh"
!include "modules\evaluation.nsh"
!include "modules\eclipse.nsh"
!include "modules\qtjambieclipse.nsh"
!endif

So, say we hack this and comment out the ifndef OPENSOURCE_BUILD line. If we
look in the "modules" directory none of those modules exist, at least in my
source distribution, which was downloaded from Nokia through ftp.nokia.com.

 So this indicates that I'll probably need to purchase a Qt Commercial
license in order to get my hands on the necessary files to run the NSIS
installer. Note that I am NOT advocating that Qt change how they run their
business. Just a bit more in the "ReadMe" file explaining that if this is
what you want to do, then you need a commercial license.

** In my qt-everywhere-4.6.1 the tools/installer is there. In my
qt-everywhere-4.6.2 the tools/installer directory is NOT there. Odd. Maybe
something changed. Looking through the gitorious sources it would seem that
the tools/installer is completely gone now.

Mike Jackson