Why there is huge redundancy with Qt on Windows?

[soroush]

I just noticed that every DLL that has been copied by mingw32-make to "prefix/lib" is also present in "prefix/bin"

Is there any difference between libraries in /bin and /lib ? If not, what's the reason of such redundancy? (all about 1.25 GB)

[Jens]

I have no idea how mingw works on windows but since it is based on a unix toolchain, my best guess is that this is simply caused by a compatibility workaround due to lack of true symbolic links on the windows file system.

[soroush]

Is it safe to delete contents of \lib (of course only DLLs) and add LIBS+=<QTDIR>/bin to .pro files?

[Jens]

I will not pretend to know. But I would assume the worst thing that could happen is that you have to copy them back again... :)

The reason they are copied to /bin is probably just so that the executables can find them without messing up your system. Perhaps you should rather delete the DLLs there and just add them to your system path instead if you think it is safe.

[Wilk]

Hello.
If you are sure that dll-files are the same, then you might use "mklink":http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/cc753194(v=ws.10).aspx to make “prefix/bin” directory link to “prefix/lib” or vise-versa. You may also use mklink to create hard links for each dll-file.

[soroush]

[quote author="Wilk" date="1357500403"]Hello.
If you are sure that dll-files are the same, then you might use "mklink":http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/cc753194(v=ws.10).aspx to make “prefix/bin” directory link to “prefix/lib” or vise-versa. You may also use mklink to create hard links for each dll-file.[/quote]

Just SHIFT+DEL ed all files in /lib. :D

[Wilk]

Good enough solution

[koahnig]

In case it was some left-over and forgotten by the development team you might want to file a bug report on "JIRA":https://bugreports.qt-project.org/secure/Dashboard.jspa
That way somebody will follow up and eventually solved it for future releases.