Creating a Deployment of Gamma Ray on Windows

[brycegbrazen]

Hi all,

I was curious if anyone could guide me through the deployment process for Gamma Ray on Windows. I have done a development install of Gamma Ray by running the following commands listed in the INSTALL.md file:

    cmake -G Ninja -DCMAKE_INSTALL_PREFIX=/path/where/to/install ../path/to/gammaray
    cmake --build .
    cmake --build . --target install

However, when I try to double click the created gammaray-launcher.exe I'm greeted with errors like this:

I'm pretty new to building C++ projects so I'm not exactly sure what the issue is, but I know that the application is not finding the Qt libraries it needs (which I assume should be provided by bundled DLLs?).

I want to make a deployment of Gamma Ray that is fully standalone and that can be run just by double clicking on the executable in the File Explorer.

I found some information about an executable bundled with Qt called windeployqt but I'm not sure if I should be using that to get a standalone deployment of Gamma Ray or if so, how I should go about using it.

[mattkdab]

Can you paste the version and location of Qt on your system?

[brycegbrazen]

I've got Qt 5.15 installed, and I have it installed at C:\Qt515.

[Waqar144]

Hi, how you choose to package GammaRay is upto you. If you want to bundle Qt libs with the app or want to use a third party tool, sure. We can help with build errors or any bugs you encounter in GammaRay.

For questions about windeployqt I would suggest talking to windeployqt guys directly.

[brycegbrazen]

@Waqar144 Could we put a little snippet in the INSTALL.md file that mentions that packaging Gamma Ray is up to the user? I feel like adding this information there would be helpful.

[ratijas]

Hi, how you choose to package GammaRay is upto you.

Mind if I ask, how do you package your copy of GammaRay? Or any other contributor with a Windows machine for that matter? What are even the options available?

Note that NSIS cpack generator is totally broken at the moment. I have a little patch that fixes it enough to get through the installation, but then GammaRay.exe just refuses to launch without Qt libs. It seems to be a generic issue with Qt + CPack.

FWIW I wouldn't mind just installing something pre-built from winget these days, instead of fiddling with CMake options that haven't been touched in a decade.

[ratijas]

The lazy trick is to install Qt into something like C:\Qt\6.6.3\msvc2019_64 (which, I'm pretty sure is the default for Qt Online Installer), then build and package GammaRay with CPack (apply my patch to fix icon path), and finally install it into the same Qt directory as in the first step.

Here is my entire build script, adjust paths as necessary:

cd D:\Code\GammaRay
New-Item -ItemType Directory -Force -Path build
cd build
$Env:CMAKE_PREFIX_PATH = "C:\Qt\6.6.3\msvc2019_64"

# Install-Module Pscx -Scope CurrentUser
Import-Module Pscx -Prefix Pscx -NoClobber -Function Invoke-BatchFile
Invoke-BatchFile "C:\Program Files (x86)\Microsoft Visual Studio\2022\BuildTools\VC\Auxiliary\Build\vcvars64.bat"

cmake `
    -G Ninja `
    -DCMAKE_BUILD_TYPE=Release `
    -DQT_VERSION_MAJOR=6 `
    -DGAMMARAY_DISABLE_FEEDBACK=ON `
    "-DCMAKE_INSTALL_PREFIX=D:/Code/GammaRay/build/install" `
    ..

cmake --build .

cpack -G NSIS

You gonna need:

• Qt, msvc edition used here
• CMake: winget install -e --id Kitware.CMake
• Ninja: winget install -e --id Ninja-build.Ninja
• Microsoft Visual Studio 2022, BuildTools only is enough
• Pscx PowerShell module: https://github.com/Pscx/Pscx (entirely optional, if you just launch "Developer PowerShell for VS 2022" profile in Windows Terminal instead of manually sourcing the environment from the .bat script)