Re: [Mingw-cross-env-list] Static vs. shared Qt

[Mark Brand]

> > If you want to try out building shared Qt, the following patch seems
> > to work well on the development branch:
> > [...]
> Although this is a nice and simple way to get a running
> shared Qt, this will produce quite big DLL files.
>
> This is because all DLLs will contain all (statically
> linked) helper libraries. I don't know how much of a
> problem this is for Qt. But I guess the only "clean"
> solution is to build everything as a shared library,
> not just Qt.

Right. It's not a good general solution, but it does work around the 
QtScript/QtWebKit problem.

Having said that, for some "pure" Qt applications, it might actually be 
seen as an advantage to have all dependencies embedded in the Qt DLLs.

> Which leads us back to a recurring issue of static vs
> shared: Once I implemented our multi-target approach,
> does it make sense to apply this to static/shared, i.e.
> treating the "mainly-static" and "mainly-shared"
> approaches as two separate targets?

I hadn't realized you were considering a static/shared choice in the 
multi-target approach. I think the patch in question (two messages ago) 
should still in work for "mostly shared" mingw-cross-env. The 
OPENSSL_LIBS, PSQL_LIBS, and SYBASE_LIBS lists could be reduced or maybe 
even eliminated for shared builds. Also, there's at least one patch to 
link static sub-dependencies explicitly. But this stuff should be 
harmless as-is.

Mark