Where does the Qt sqlite plugin look for extension libraries

j_omega

I have made the appropriate modification as found in this thread to enable the Qt sqlite plugin to load extensions. However, when I run SELECT load_extension('spatialite_mod'), I now get the error The specified module could not be found

On a Windows Qt installation, where do I need to put the spatialite_mod.dll file so that it can be found a runtime? I have already tried putting it in the binary directory without any success.

j_omega

This turned out to be a multi-part problem.

The answer to the original question is that Qt looks for the libraries in the working directory (QDir::currentPath()) and in the Windows PATH.

Part 1:

On Windows, the specified module could not be found error also can mean that one of mod_spatialite.dll dependencies was not found. In my case, I had forgotten to move these dependencies to the same directory as mod_spatialite.dll. They include:

libgcc_s_dw2-1.dll
libstdc++-6.dll
libsqlite3-0.dll
libxml2-2.dll
zlib1.dll
libfreexl-1.dll
libgeos_c-1.dll
libgeos-3-5-0.dll
libiconv-2.dll
liblzma-5.cll
libproj-9.dll

Part 2:

The libgcc_s_dw2-1.dll and libstdc++-6.dll libraries shipped with libspatialite do not work with Windows 10. Read more about this here and here. They would crash the program when loaded. The fix for me was to grab the same libraries from my Qt installation at C:\Qt\5.11.3\mingw53_32.

SGaist

Hi,

Did you try to pass the full file path ?

Or if you have it one the same folder as your application, "./name.dll".

j_omega

Yes, I have tried both of these options as well as adding ".dll" to the end.

MrShawn

Did you place it in the application directory folder?

j_omega

@MrShawn Yes, I tried that. I also tried one directory higher since that is what QDir::currentPath() returns when called immediately before the load_extension call.

MrShawn

What about relative to your driver? I see that they get the driver from the DB object so my guess is either relative to the driver or the .db file.

For example when running through the qt creator IDE it should look at the folder which contains the sql drivers(unless you have put your dependencies in your local build folder).

On my Qt version 5.12.0 64 bit mingw that folder is located here: C:\Qt\5.12.0\mingw73_64\plugins\sqldrivers

Did you try that?

I tried googling a bit and only see code examples but no statements on WHERE the extension should be placed...

SGaist

Can you provide a minimal compilable example ?
This way we may also test on our end to find out.

j_omega