Embedding other executables

fredrossperry

I'm working on an app that need the services of some other executables. Rather than create an installer, I'd love for the app to just unpack them and put them in a convenient place when the app is launched. This is for OS X, Linux and probably Windows later on.
So, questions:

 1.  Is this dumb, and I should just go make an installer?

 2.  on OSX, how would I get files into the app bundle's resource or MacOS folder?

 3.  For Linux, how on earth would I do something like #2?

These executables are large, 10-20 MBytes each. So building them in as resources in the Qt sense
lakes forever.

thanks

fredrossperry

And, why am a "lab rat"?

MuldeR

You can "embed" the required executables into your main executable file as resources and "extract" them at runtime, e.g. to the TEMP path. Look at the "Qt Resource System":http://qt-project.org/doc/qt-4.8/resources.html and the "QResource":http://qt-project.org/doc/qt-4.8/qresource.html class.

BTW: "Ranks":http://qt-project.org/ranks like "Lab Rat" are assigned automatically in this forum, based on the number of points you have earned ;-)

BTW 2.0: You may use a tool like "UPX":http://upx.sourceforge.net/ or "MPress":http://www.matcode.com/mpress.htm to reduce the size of the executables before embedding.