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Let's build small Qt libraries! (Step 2: Optimize build-settings)

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  • P Offline
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    Peppy
    wrote on 17 May 2011, 15:39 last edited by
    #8

    9MB is too much?

    I suppose you do it for school. In that way, I think you should use "static" release, it adds Qt Framework Libraries into your project libraries, so you won't have to carry Qt DLLs with project, but it will have to effect on size of your binaries, after that you should use UPX....

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    • H Offline
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      Hedge
      wrote on 17 May 2011, 16:05 last edited by
      #9

      I've already programmed this tool twice (in Object Pascal and C#). The tool was always around 2-3 MB in size.

      I don't want to scare my users off and am generally interested in this whole build-improvement thing.

      Binding it statically won't reduce the size much (and isn't allowed in that context either if I go LGPGL).

      @Peppy: I will try the MSVC-compiler as well.

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      • G Offline
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        goetz
        wrote on 17 May 2011, 17:13 last edited by
        #10

        As you're on Windows using MinGW (I know your project quite good now :-) ) you must add the respective mkspec:

        @
        ./configure -platform win32-gcc ... your additional args go here ....
        @

        The rest of your no-xxx switches does not influence the size very significantly. It just leaves out the build of some submodules and the like, which you would not put into your final applications directory anyways.

        Be sure to create release libs (without debugging symbols), this decreases the size of the libs significantly!

        And finally you can try to run MinGW/bin/strip.exe on every executable and library (DLL) you have in your directory. I did not try this yet, but at least on Unix this reduces the size even more.

        For distribution, put it all in a ZIP. UPX and the like is not really useful IMHO. The exe and the libs must be decompressed eventually to run the program, thus slowing down the start up time of your application.

        Remember: Disk space is cheap :-)

        http://www.catb.org/~esr/faqs/smart-questions.html

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        • P Offline
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          Peppy
          wrote on 17 May 2011, 17:26 last edited by
          #11

          @Volker: I thought so. But I am very surpised that somebody wants to compress binaries on the maximum in time when we have 2-3 TBytes harddisks (no everybody has terabytes harddrives, but 16MB is not so much...)...

          I am compiling under MSVC 2008 compiler and it's quite better than MinGW (IMHO)...

          BTW. What is the name of your project? :-)

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          • H Offline
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            Hedge
            wrote on 17 May 2011, 17:35 last edited by
            #12

            bq. As you’re on Windows using MinGW (I know your project quite good now :-) ) you must add the respective mkspec:
            ./configure -platform win32-gcc ... your additional args go here ....

            Just making sure. So I need to attach the compiler-switches like -fmerge-all-constants already in the configure-step?

            These are the Qt-dll's and their sizes my program currently needs:

            @Uncompressed size | UPX -9 size | Name

              2,43MB          |    0,91MB    | QTCore4.dll
              2,92MB          |    0,86MB    | QTDeclarative4.dll
              9,39MB          |    3,69MB    | QtGui4.dll
              1,15MB          |    0,40MB    | QTNetwork4.dll
              2,07MB          |    0,65MB    | QTScript4.dll
              0,20MB          |    0,10MB    | QTSql4.dll
              3,82MB          |    0,94MB    | QTXmlPatterns4.dll
            

             21,98MB              7,55MB@
            

            Especially QtGui4.dll should be reducable much further since I'm using exclusively QML (with Jens desktop-components) for the GUI.

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            • P Offline
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              Peppy
              wrote on 17 May 2011, 17:42 last edited by
              #13

              Quite big difference...but there is a good question: Do you need it? Will it help you as you are waiting? Has the binary compression any result on booting (I mean loading) time?

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              • G Offline
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                goetz
                wrote on 17 May 2011, 17:50 last edited by
                #14

                The DLLs cannot be shrunk, unfortunately. They contain all the symbols of the module, even if you only need one of them. And QML of course depends heavily on the widgets in QtGui :-)

                http://www.catb.org/~esr/faqs/smart-questions.html

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                • P Offline
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                  Peppy
                  wrote on 17 May 2011, 17:54 last edited by
                  #15

                  DLLs should get redesigned, this system is too old (from Windows 95, I think), but that's the work of Microsoft...

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                  • H Offline
                    H Offline
                    Hedge
                    wrote on 17 May 2011, 17:55 last edited by
                    #16

                    So even qconfig won't help?
                    I could exclude some widgets in the sourcecode but that is a bit too much (imagine I need to do this for every new qt-version).

                    strip <file> -s didn't really do much. Any other useful parameters?

                    What I am aiming for is a small download-size for users.

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                    • P Offline
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                      Peppy
                      wrote on 17 May 2011, 17:56 last edited by
                      #17

                      -o1, ..., -o5 for MinGW

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                      • H Offline
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                        Hedge
                        wrote on 17 May 2011, 18:01 last edited by
                        #18

                        Where do I use these flags?

                        I initially asked where I can apply the compiler-flags:

                        bq. -Os
                        -fmerge-all-constants
                        -fno-default-inline
                        -fno-inline

                        Neither configure nor mingw32-make accept them.

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                        • G Offline
                          G Offline
                          goetz
                          wrote on 17 May 2011, 18:01 last edited by
                          #19

                          [quote author="Peppy" date="1305654867"]DLLs should get redesigned, this system is too old (from Windows 95, I think), but that's the work of Microsoft...[/quote]

                          Shared libraries (.so on unix/linux, .dylib on Macs) behave just the same way! They were intended to reduce the memory footprint (a shared library is loaded into memory only once and used by multiple programs), as well as disk space. Both are not so an issue anymore these days.

                          So, a Mac application bundle is "bloated" too, as would be a linux archive containing all necessary non-system libraries.

                          http://www.catb.org/~esr/faqs/smart-questions.html

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                          • G Offline
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                            goetz
                            wrote on 17 May 2011, 18:10 last edited by
                            #20

                            [quote author="Hedge" date="1305654933"]So even qconfig won't help?
                            I could exclude some widgets in the sourcecode but that is a bit too much (imagine I need to do this for every new qt-version).

                            strip <file> -s didn't really do much. Any other useful parameters?

                            What I am aiming for is a small download-size for users.[/quote]

                            No, qconfig does not help. The DLLs will always contain all widgets.

                            strip regularly does not save very much space on binaries compiled in release mode already.

                            If you're only after a small download size, use a decent archiver and set it's mode to maximum compression.

                            [quote author="Hedge" date="1305655290"]Where do I use these flags?

                            I initially asked where I can apply the compiler-flags:

                            bq. -Os
                            -fmerge-all-constants
                            -fno-default-inline
                            -fno-inline

                            Neither configure nor mingw32-make accept them.[/quote]

                            These are compiler/linker flags, you can try to set them for configure this way:

                            @
                            CFLAGS="-Os -fmerge-all-constants -fno-default-inline -fno-inline"
                            ./configure -platform win32-g++
                            your additional flags go here
                            @

                            But be aware that fiddling with optimization settings (-Os) may make things worse or add a runtime slowdown penalty.

                            http://www.catb.org/~esr/faqs/smart-questions.html

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                            • P Offline
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                              Peppy
                              wrote on 17 May 2011, 18:14 last edited by
                              #21

                              But they were designed about 20 years before, and probably they will change...

                              But back to the topic, I don't remember what it was...

                              I think: http://wiki.wxwidgets.org/Reducing_Executable_Size (--strip-all)

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                              • H Offline
                                H Offline
                                Hedge
                                wrote on 17 May 2011, 18:22 last edited by
                                #22

                                Thanks for clarifying that CFLAGS-thing. I'm currently writing my BA so I've got time to try some configurations (and also the MSVC-compiler).

                                I'll post the details here.

                                However I've a problem atm ...size-wise.
                                My application, although build in release-mode asks for the debug-DLLs as well (QtGui4d.dll etc.) when I try to execute it on another PC. Any ideas what would could've gone wrong?
                                The executables size is much smaller than in debug-mode (400kb vs. 2.4MB).

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                                • P Offline
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                                  Peppy
                                  wrote on 17 May 2011, 18:25 last edited by
                                  #23

                                  Yes, executable is much more smaller than DLLs (who knows why?)...

                                  Why that happens? Good question... Please make new thread, it's new question, and it'll going to off topic...

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                                  • H Offline
                                    H Offline
                                    Hedge
                                    wrote on 17 May 2011, 18:31 last edited by
                                    #24

                                    There's already a thread "here":here http://developer.qt.nokia.com/forums/viewthread/6033/ regarding that question but no one had a good idea yet.
                                    I threw it in b/c it didn't seem to be too off-topic (it's influencing the application-size in a very bad way).

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                                    • P Offline
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                                      Peppy
                                      wrote on 17 May 2011, 18:39 last edited by
                                      #25

                                      Yes, but this topic is named as "Minimizing sizes of DLLs" not as "Issue with DLLs" ;) That's just detial, but that I've learnt on other board as moderator (just my habit :-D)

                                      Yes, it's quite strange...

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                                      • D Offline
                                        D Offline
                                        deni-herdiman
                                        wrote on 17 May 2011, 20:15 last edited by
                                        #26

                                        [quote author="Hedge" date="1305656526"]
                                        However I've a problem atm ...size-wise.
                                        My application, although build in release-mode asks for the debug-DLLs as well (QtGui4d.dll etc.) when I try to execute it on another PC. Any ideas what would could've gone wrong?
                                        The executables size is much smaller than in debug-mode (400kb vs. 2.4MB).
                                        [/quote]
                                        if you're using UPX....
                                        try delete pagefile.sys of your compiler's pc, than run your apps than something going haven...
                                        sadly crash in previous trial... :(

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                                        • H Offline
                                          H Offline
                                          Hedge
                                          wrote on 17 May 2011, 20:16 last edited by
                                          #27

                                          The problem was another dll build in debug-mode. Peppy found the solution in the thread mentioned above.

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