[Qt-interest] Qt Redist

[Mihail Naydenov]

Point taken, thank you.




----- Original Message ----
> From: Constantin Makshin <cmakshin at gmail.com>
> To: Qt Interest <qt-interest at trolltech.com>
> Sent: Sun, November 28, 2010 10:25:20 PM
> Subject: Re: [Qt-interest] Qt Redist
> 
> 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. :)
>