Hacker News new | ask | show | jobs
by Conan_Kudo 91 days ago
> Edit: Some comments mention Qt which could also work although how large is the runtime? Can it be compiled statically?

You need a commercial license for that, but yes you could. But since applications are typically distributed with install bundles that put into application-local program files directories, it's not super-important as long as you only cherry-pick the Qt libraries you need.
1 comments
rubymamis 90 days ago
This is wrong. There's a misconception that you can't statically link your app when using the open-source LGPL version of Qt. From my reading of the LGPL license this doesn't appear to be the case[1]. The LGPL allows you to statically link your app as long as you provide the object files and allow users to relink your app with a different version of Qt.

I've observed many people spreading this misinformation about only being able to dynamically link with the LGPL version of Qt. Please stop this.

[1] https://www.gnu.org/licenses/gpl-faq.html#LGPLStaticVsDynami...

link
Conan_Kudo 90 days ago
Yes, that is true, but in practice nobody has ever done that. And the material complexity of offering that mode is higher than just dynamically linking the library.

Also, modern compilers make this method much harder to use. It is much harder to stably relink object files like that than to just use the normal dynamic link method.

link