[Solved] Linking statically against some libs

beedaddy

Hello,

sorry for this beginner question but I'm somehow stuck...
I'm playing around with Qt and created a small application which perfectly compiles and runs on Linux. It uses libical and boost. Now I would like to build it on Windows. Installing the libs went smoothly (using MinGW). But now I think QtCreator (or qmake, that is) tries to link dynamically. How can I link to these libs (not Qt!) statically?

What makes me wonder is that QtCreator thinks that the (static) libs end with .lib, but their suffix is .a. So, I can't add them via the GUI dialog, but did it manually, for example:
@win32: INCLUDEPATH += $$quote(C:/mylibs/mingw/include)
win32: LIBS += -L$$quote(C:/mylibs/mingw/lib) -llibical@

Somewhere I read that CONFIG += static will do the trick, but it doesn't change anything.

So, maybe you can help me with this.

Thanks a lot
Martin

koahnig

welcome to devnet

The Qt precompiled versions are always for dynamic linking. You would need to compile Qt by yourself for static linking.

However, beware of the "license issues":http://qt.nokia.com/products/licensing as well.

beedaddy

Thanks koahnig. I'm aware of the licensing model. So it isn't possible to link some libs (Qt) dynamically and some others statically? I wasn't aware of this linker restriction (haven't done so much with libs).

But then it would be nice if the build process would copy the dynamic libs into the build-dir so that the .exe can find them (on windows, that is), right?

unai_i

Hello,
Linking some libs statically and Qt dynamically is totally possible. The .a file should be ok as long as you compiled it for Windows or you downloaded windows version. I think Qt Creator has nothing to do with your problem but it's more gcc (or more precisely the linker) which handles your libraries while building. CONFIG += static is for compiling your lib statically not the app.
What messages have you got? Missing references while linking, missing dll when running?

koahnig

My remark on dynamic distribution was about the Qt libs only. As already asked by unai_i what are your error messages?

beedaddy

I only got the message, that the linker couldn't find the lib, e.g.:
@c:/mingw/bin/../lib/gcc/mingw32/4.7.0/../../../../mingw32/bin/ld.exe: cannot find -llibboost_date_time-mgw47-mt-1_50@

But the .a files are available. If I compile boost also for dynamic linking (.dll.a, if I understand this correctly), the linker finds the lib but links it dynamically.

Maybe I just don't know how to tell qmake that I want to link dynamically?

Sam

May be not much of help but there is a video tutorial "here":http://www.voidrealms.com/viewtutorial.aspx?id=245 that you can check .

beedaddy

Sam, yes, that was it. Thanks a lot! What I had to do is:
@win32: LIBS += "C:/mylibs/mingw/lib/llibboost_date_time-mgw47-mt-1_50.a"@

Sam

You are welcome,

Glad to know that its working :) Kindly Edit the title and add [Solved]

beedaddy

Ok, title is edited. The only problem now is that my current MinGW/GCC version (4.7) doesn't seem to fit with the precompiled Qt binaries (MinGW 4.4). But that's a different thing. This one is solved. :)

EDIT: Recompiled Qt 4.8.2 with MinGW GCC 4.7.0 and now everything works.