How does Qt work (exactly)?

Question

When you write an application using Qt, can it just be run right away in different operating systems? And (correct me if I'm wrong) you don't need to have Qt already installed in all of the different platforms where you want to execute your application?

How exactly does this work? Does Qt compile to the desired platform, or does it bundle some "dlls" (libs), or how does it do it? Is it different from programming a Java application, that runs cross-platform.

If you use Python to write a Qt application with Python bindings, does your end user need to have Python installed?

Answer 1

Qt (ideally) provides source compatibility, not binary compatibility. You still have to compile the application separately for each platform, and use the appropriate dynamic Qt libraries (which also need to be compiled separately, and have some platform-specific code).

For your final question, the user would need Python, the Qt libraries, and the binding library (e.g. pyqt), but there are various ways to bundle these.