Static Qt build (Windows) missed some libraries

JonB

@mzimmers
When you ask a question like this please always state your platform, and in the case of Windows whether you are using MSVC of MinGW, we cannot guess/remember!

Also please give some context to the error (e.g. from the Build Output pane). I had initially thought this was an error from the linker, indicating it cannot find the libraries. However looking at

:-1: error: cannot find -lfontconfig

is that actually an error from qmake/the Makefile, indicating that it sees a file/target named -lfontconfig which it cannot find?

Answer going forward depends on the above....

mzimmers

@JonB sorry about that...platform is now in title.

My kit is using the MinGW 8.1.0 32-bit compilers.

The error is indeed coming from the linker. QMake runs fine.

Thanks...

JonB

@mzimmers
OK, well, if it is the linker, search your whole disk for libfontconfig.a, there are two possibilities:

You have the file(s) somewhere but not being found. Tell it where to find them.
You do not have the files anywhere. Check what you have installed/re-install.

mzimmers

@JonB when you say "reinstall," do you mean I have to perform the entire build again, or is there a mechanism for telling the configure command to perform an incremental operation.

Does configure have an option to "undo" itself - to return the repo to an unaltered state, or is it OK to just do this with a git reset? (I'm trying to minimize the time taken to perform the configure/build steps, as they're quite long on my system.)

Oh: the file libfontconfig.a doesn't exist even on my system "A" where the build works. So, it seems like I made some kind of mistake in the configuration.

Thanks...

hskoglund

Hi, don't know if this helps, but I recognize that error message from when building a static Qt 6.3.0 version on Ubuntu 22.04 using gcc 11.2.0. The cure on Ubuntu is:
sudo apt install libfontconfig-dev
but that's not applicable on Windows 10 :-(

Check your configure command line, perhaps there's a
-fontconfig
that causes the error? If so try removing it...

mzimmers

@hskoglund my configure command doesn't have anything like that. Here's what I'm currently using:

$ configure -confirm-license -static -static-runtime -opensource -release -platform win32-g++ -opengl desktop -skip qtwebengine -nomake examples -nomake tests -nomake tools -recheck-all -prefix c:\qt\5.15.2_static

Again, what's really confusing is that my other system (the one that works) doesn't have that library anyway, so somehow, on this system, I'm introducing a false dependency...I just don't know how I'm doing that.

hskoglund

Do any of your 2 Windows 10 systems have WSL or WSL2 installed? Perhaps those messes with your build somehow...

mzimmers

@hskoglund both of them do. But, how would that be affecting this?

hskoglund

Just guessing, the font database in Windows 10 is sometimes shared with WSL/WSL2, perhaps the dependency on fontconfig etc. is picked up that way.

mzimmers

I've been playing with this today, and I just discovered that my commands are building a 64-bit Qt library, which 1) isn't what I intended, and 2) might be part of the problem. I've looked at the options for the configure command, and I don't see a way to specify that I want a 32-bit library. Can someone advise me on what to do here?

EDIT: I even added these entries in the qt.pro file to:

CONFIG -= x86_64
CONFIG += x86

Somehow, my build still insists on creating a a Qt library with a profile x66-windows-msys-pe-64bit. WHAT am I doing wrong?

Thanks...

EDIT 2: this question is really a different subject, so I'm going to ask it in a different thread. Leaving this one open for now until I get to the bottom of the missing libraries.