[Qt-interest] Qt Redist

[Constantin Makshin]

On Friday 26 November 2010 22:19:38 Mihail Naydenov wrote:
> ----- Original Message ----
> 
> > From: Konrad Rosenbaum <konrad at silmor.de>
> > To: qt-interest at trolltech.com
> > Sent: Fri, November 26, 2010 5:47:01 PM
> > Subject: Re: [Qt-interest] Qt Redist
> > 
> > On Friday 26 November 2010 15:51:34 Mihail Naydenov wrote:
> > > I know the  answer, but still, I will ask.
> > > 
> > > Is there any Qt redistributable  package for the end users  - much like
> > >  every major framework  (java,.net, air etc)
> > > 
> > > Or the question is "Why isn't  there"?
> > 
> > It would be less useful than you would think. Qt has many valid,  but binary 
> > incompatible configurations, while VM languages like Java or .NET  have only 
> >one 
> >
> > configuration (plus some extras or minus a mobile  edition).
> 
> I dont fully understand, what configurations, beyond versions? For instance Qt 
> 4.7, all dlls in release, what is the problem with that?
>  Also, considering the stable ABI, updates of the framework should be possible 
> without affecting the user (in a negative way).
I guess the primary reason is that different compilers use different function mangling schemes. For example, Qt compiled with MinGW can't be used to run applications compiled with MSVC and vice versa. If you try to do that, you'll get lots of errors about missing identifiers. And saying something like "build your applications with XYZ toolchain if you want to use our framework" is obviously a [very] bad idea.

Also, even if you talk only about Windows, you'll have to create at least 3 packages:
1) 32-bit MinGW;
2) 32-bit MSVC;
3) 64-bit MSVC.
That's bare minimum to satisfy most developers' needs. But, since some MSVC versions (at least 2008 and 2009) have several variants of their runtime library (one per each Visual C++ version, including service packs and, sometimes, even hotfixes) and mixing applications/libraries that use different runtime libraries may cause problems, number of needed packages increases greatly and may become confusing even to experienced users (application A requires Qt package "MSVC 2009 RTM", app B needs Qt "MSVC 2009 SP1", app C uses Qt "MSVC 2009 SP1 with ATL hotfix", etc.).
Thanks to Microsoft for making our (developers') lives less boring. :)
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