Qt application - Windows 98 deployment

GTToole · wrote on 16 Jul 2015, 16:49

Hello
I've made a small open source Qt application. I started last year with Qt 4.5, upgraded Qt few times (currently to Qt 5.5) but it sill builds well both in Qt 5.5 and 4.8 (I'm developing it in Linux with Qt 4.8 and Windows with 5.5). Because testing machine has quite expensive adapter which is present by default in many older machines (serial port - true serial port), I decided to try to make a Windows 98 executable of my program to be able to run it in older computers.
My program is an electronics service tool, and it's not uncommon for older machines to be in electronic services (e.g. to handle parallel port programmers).
My current Windows environment is the default Qt 5.5 plus my Qt 5.5 release build without ICU (dynamic, for final binary builds). Everything is compiled using MinGW.

As I've read in http://stackoverflow.com/questions/2999095/compiling-qt-for-windows-98 the last version which works with Windows 98 is 4.4.3. I tried Qt 4.4.3 installer, it needs MinGW 3.2. Should I install both Qt 4.4.3 and MinGW 3.2 and add installed versions to Qt creator?

There is another problem. My application is using Qt Core, Qt GUI and QtSerialPort, which is not present by default in Qt 4.x. Where I can download QtSerialPort which can be built in Qt 4.4.x Was it accessible in 4.4 at all?
Yours
M.

kuzulis · wrote on 17 Jul 2015, 07:57

QtSerialPort which can be built in Qt 4.4.x Was it accessible in 4.4 at all?

It can't be used in Win98 since QSerialPort uses Win32 API for NT kernel, but Win98 it is a DOS. :)

Where I can download QtSerialPort which can be built in Qt 4.4.x Was it accessible in 4.4 at all?

The current QSerialPort is supported from Qt 4.8.x and above for Winsows XP and above (but, it is perhaps possible to rebuild for Win2K).
You can download it from here (it is a branch for Qt4) : http://code.qt.io/cgit/qt/qtserialport.git/tree/?h=qt4-dev

If you want to use in Qt less than 4.8.x, you can use QSerialDevice or QextSerialPort libraries (please find it himself, because now the google.code and gitorious.org, where this libraries are lived was closed). But, again it is only for the Windows NT kernel, as I know.

GTToole · wrote on 17 Jul 2015, 21:03

Thank you for answer. Because the program is driving the hardware connected to serial port, I decided not to port to Win98, as it won't be useful without serial port support.
I have one more question. My program's source code is published under GPL.
Is it OK with Qt license to publish Windows EXE build with Qt DLLs needed to run?
And is it OK to publish Qt DLLs built from unmodified source, but with different settings (my Qt 5.5 release build has ICU turned off to fit DLLs in my hosting).
M.

kuzulis · wrote on 20 Jul 2015, 08:08

Sorry, I'm not expert in licensing issues and others bureaucracies.