QtForum.org

why not use dll?

I belive that in qt configuration you can direct, that qt should be linked in static/dynamic way. Or check the .pro file for override this settings.

Windows:

configure /?

gives you an option in confiure to

Quoted

* -shared ............ Create and use shared Qt libraries.
-static ............ Create and use static Qt libraries.

note: The defaults (*) are usually acceptable

I belive that the same option goes in linux. For override the .pro file Nicolas should know the answer Or check the doc.trolltech.com

try CONFIG += staticlib

as an observation

for Qt, static could be expansive

two applications runing at the same time cause libraries to be loaded two times

the same for your application, but no problem if it is single instance and the only Qt application to run

Follow this guide to compile your QT application in static mode :

http://qtnode.net/wiki?title=Building_static

As you will see, you'll have to recompile the QT library itself before you can compile your QT application and use statically linked libraries.
This will take about 10-20 minutes.

You'll find yourself a huge output executable after compiling your application in static mode.

To strip this executable from unused stuff, start the QT command prompt, change directory to where your output executable is located and type 'strip <executablename>' , e.g. 'strip test.exe'.

This dramatically lowers the filesize.
With a default Eclipse / QT configuration and a very basic GUI application with one form with a few buttons and no fancy code, your statically linked output file will be around 60 MBs before stripping and around 8 MBs after.

If you decide to compress it with the UPX executable compressor, the size will be just over 2 MBs.

I'm curious if people have had other results or have more tips to reduce the filesize.

are you sure you didn't compile debug version

if so, on Linux, you can add in the .pro file
CONFIG += separate_debug_info

as an example, on Linux, using shared objects,
for about 40000 lines (.h and .cpp files)
stripped libxxxx.so is ~2.5 MBytes
debug infos libxxxx.so.debug is ~26 MBytes