How to create executable file for a Qt Application?

Question

I've been searching on the internet for some useful and clear information about this, it's annoying that such a trivial thing is so hard to do.

What I need is to create an executable file for my Qt project, in order to run it in other computers. My project runs nicely in the Qt Creator, but when I try to run the executable created in the release folder I get errors about some dll missing, and though I have put all of them in the same directory of my .exe I now got some errors about entrypoints in procedures inside the dll (QtCore4.dll).

The solution looks like to be a static linking, I've found many information about it, but none of them really helped me. Here is what I have tried so far:

• Using the executable created in the release folder as I said above.
• Static Linking, following this tutorial (and many others, all almost the same thing): http://doc.qt.io/qt-4.8/deployment-windows.html but I get the following error during the "configure -static": NMAKE : fatal error U1077: '"c:\Arquivos de programas\Microsoft Visual Studio 9. 0\VC\BIN\cl.EXE"' : return code '0x2' Stop. Building qmake failed, return code 2

For that I couldn't find any solution, so here I am, just trying to create an executable file for my Qt project, hope you guys can give me some light here.

Answer 1

Basically you have to look for mingw subfolder deep into qt tree, where qt utilities reside, and copy needed dll's.

These are the steps I follow, based upon QT 4.7.4, for packaging the application with correct shared libraries.

1. Let's say you've installed QT under c:\qtsdk
2. Open your project, and compile it in release mode.
3. Go to this directory: C:\QtSDK\Desktop\Qt\4.7.4\mingw\bin -- it contains all shared libraries. Debug libraries end with a "d" -- frex, QtCore.dll is release version, while QtCoreD.dll is debug version

4. Copy at least these files into your release directory (where your .exe lies)

   • mingwm10.dll
   • libgcc_s_dw2-1.dll
   • QtCore4.dll
   • QtGui4.dll

   I just built, tested and deployed a dummy project this way.