Static linking for windows

dalaing

It looks like you've had two problems with the process.

The first problem has already been covered, by other people in here and in the documentation. From the docs:

bq. Also, we have used nmake in all the examples, but if you use MinGW you must use mingw32-make instead.

I'm not sure it counts as a deep flaw if the documentation is unable to prevent people from skimming :)

The second problem is a typo, indicated by the error message:

bq. creating symbolic link mkspecs/default/win32-G++’ to win32-G++’: No such file or directory

If you try again with configure -platform win32-g++ <all of your other configure options> you'll probably have more luck. I believe all of the options to configure are case sensitive.

Hopefully that helps.

sleam

Thank you for your feedback david, but I got a bit confued, and I think the forum is the fault:

bq. creating symbolic link mkspecs/default/win32-G++’ to win32-G++’: No such f
ile or directory

The text i entered into the quote was not: "...win32-G+..." it was: "...win32-G++..."

So, I cannot really be sure what you mean david, the forum does not correctly reflect what you and I wrote.

Moderators, please fix this?

giesbert

Hi,

if all you need is a static build of Qt, done with mingw, do the following:

extract Qt-...-src.zip (that is without any temporary file that mighjt disturb) :)

Change path-to-qt\mkspecs\win32-g++\qmake.conf:
@
QMAKE_CFLAGS_RELEASE = -Os -momit-leaf-frame-pointer
QMAKE_LFLAGS = -static -static-libgcc -enable-stdcall-fixup -Wl,-enable-auto-import -Wl,-enable-runtime-pseudo-reloc

cd %qtdir%
configure -static -release -no-exceptions -[other parameters like -mmx -sse -sse2 -3dnow etc...]
mingw32-make sub-src [here you can make some coffee etc.. it will take some time]
@

If you use webkit, you have to change the webkit pri file also:
\src\3rdparty\webkit\ WebKit.pri:
CONFIG += staticlib

For builds after making the changes in the config files, I used a batch file:
@set QTDIR=D:\Developement\Qt\2010.04\qt_static
set PATH=D:\Developement\Qt\2010.04\qt_static\bin
set PATH=%PATH%;D:\Developement\Qt\2010.04\bin;D:\Developement\Qt\2010.04\mingw\bin
set PATH=%PATH%;%SystemRoot%\System32
set QMAKESPEC=win32-g++

mingw32-make confclean
configure.exe -release -confirm-license -qt-libpng -opensource -no-incredibuild-xge -process -static
mingw32-make
@

goetz

Could you please change the topic back to its original text. The forum does not have a bug.

mgran

Looks like the forum wants to make an underline (uses a + for markup) instead of letting you write "g++" in a block quote.

Not a bug - just a very eager feature ;) We shall have a look.

goetz

If you are on a unixoid OS it might be a typo. Instead of

@-platform win32-G++@

use

@-platform win32-g++@

with a lower case g not a capital G.

giesbert

Hi, I created a wiki page on how to create static libaries for windows with gcc:
"BuildStaticQtForWindowsWithGcc":http://developer.qt.nokia.com/wiki/Category:QtDevelopment::General::BuildStaticQtForWindowsWithGcc

I hope it might help.

Cezary Tomczak

If anyone is trying to compile libraries for Qt 4.7.1 with mingw read this:

Qt libraries 4.7.1 for Windows do not compile with mingw, there are errors in src/declarative/qml/ in 5 files, they use "intptr_t" which is defined in "stdint.h" as "int", which generates an error in casts. I've looked on gitorious qt 4.7.2 and it has been fixed, "intptr_t" has been replaced with "uintptr" which is defined in qglobal.h as "QIntegerForSizeof[void*]::Unsigned" and works fine.

The fix: search for "intptr_t" in src/declarative/qml and replace it with "uintptr" (should find 5 files).

After the the search & replace libs compile with no errors.

Cezary Tomczak

Gerolf Reinwardt: I've been compiling qt libs yesterday, I didn't know about that wiki page, it's been a lot of pain.

My compile solution differs a little from the one in wiki, but it works, so it should be ok, right? Here are the differences:

I deleted the whole lib/ directory along with fonts and readme.
I didn't touch bin/ directory, all files are still there
win32-g++/qmake.conf, I didn't add "DEFINES += QT_STATIC_BUILD"
also not this: bin\qmake.exe projects.pro QT_BUILD_PARTS=”libs” JAVASCRIPTCORE_JIT=”yes”

But i've added more arguments in configure like -no-make examples -no-make tools etc. So only lib/ and qmake/ have been compiled.

And in qt creator I've added this static version and provided qmake from the qmake/ directory, not the bin/ directory.

There are more articles about building qt static:

http://www.qtcentre.org/wiki/index.php?title=Building_static_Qt_on_Windows

http://www.qtcentre.org/wiki/index.php?title=Building_static_Qt_on_Windows_with_MinGW

http://www.formortals.com/build-qt-static-small-microsoft-intel-gcc-compiler/

Formortals.com provides cflags for size-optimized libraries, but they don't work: -Os -mpreferred-stack-boundary=2 -finline-small-functions -momit-leaf-frame-pointer (I got compile errors)

Btw. I've been compiling with mingw 4.5.0 (g++ version), the mingw included in qt sdk is 4.4.0. I compared them by compiling project with shared libraries and the executable created with 4.5.0 was 85 KB, compare it to 130 KB with 4.4.0. But there is an additional .dll required when compiling with 4.5.0 (libstdc++.dll which is 850 KB), 4.4.0 only requires mingwm10.dll and libgcc_s_dw2-1.dll. When compiling statically I only used 4.5.0 so can't compare them, which ones generates smaller exe.

But here here is some info for my program, using 4.5.0 compiled staticaly: using CORE, GUI and DECLARATIVE libraries, the compiled exe is 8.7 MB, after upx'ing it compresses to: 3.2 MB.

There is no difference when running the 8.7 MB exe or the upx'ed 3.2 MB exe, they both execute n less than a second. Compare it with exe with the dlls: it executes 3-4 seconds! (tested on old one computer - 1.5 GHz 1 core). Yes it takes so long to load these dlls, together the dlls size is 23.3 MB. I use only core, gui and declarative but they require others too when running the program: QtNetwork4.dll, QtScript4.dll, QtSql4.dll, QtXmlPatterns4.dll - so together it is 23.3 MB. It is not so bad when using an NSIS installer (nsis.sourceforge.net), it can pack it using lzma to 7.2 MB. But using static libraries and upx gives us 3.2 MB which is 2.5x less.

Btw. when you disable not needed libaries, as I was compiling my app disabling qtwebkit and others (see configure.exe arguments) the lib/ and qmake/ can compile in less than 30 minutes (using mingw 4.5.0).

niby

You can use VC Compiler instead of MinGW.
That's should been fastest.

giesbert

From my experiences, MSVC and gcc compiler are not so different in time.
Regarding the mingwm10.dll and libgcc_s_dw2-1.dll libraries, thta's why I added LFLAGS = -static -static-libgcc which adds these as static libraries.
I know, there are several pages describing statically build, but I also tried long time to get it compiled, until I had all Info I needed :-). That's why I created the page describing my steps one after the other (I left the round trips out).
It's clear, that the dll size is much bigger, as it contains everything, and you exe only what you need. So static executables are always faster and smaller. But they have more effort in fixing and maintaining, as you can't fix just one part, you always have to distribute all, incl the Qt code (as it's in the exe) and don't get fixes, just by changing the Qt dlls.

..k1..

Thank You Cezary Tomczak!

this:
[quote author="Cezary Tomczak" date="1291037300"]

I deleted the whole lib/ directory along with fonts and readme.
I didn't touch bin/ directory, all files are still there
win32-g++/qmake.conf, I didn't add "DEFINES += QT_STATIC_BUILD"
also not this: bin\qmake.exe projects.pro QT_BUILD_PARTS=”libs” JAVASCRIPTCORE_JIT=”yes”
[/quote]

helps me a lot, after days tearing out my hair.

Billa