Re: [Mingw-users] linker stuck when compiling Qt...

[Kuba O. <ku...@ma...>]

> I'm afraid you have to be more patient. If you build Qt on windows with
> MinGW the link step takes from half up to one hour depending on the
> available ram size. Ld will take up to 1 GB if you provide it. And I can't
> remember having succeeded to build Qt on a machine with less than 600 MB.

Wow, that linker is really crap then. Borland's old and venerable linker took 
about 96MB virtual space to do the same thing. And about 2 minutes, not 30 
times longer :(

> The relevant difference to the GNU Linux link process is the windows
> specific export/import process of symbols. Unfortunately to build Qt you
> have to use the linker switch --export-all-symbols. Without it the link
> time drops dramatically but the linker will also complain about
> unsresolved symbols. I actually do not understand why. In the source code
> every symbol is properly handled with dllexport/dllimport and it should
> work.
>
> For more information and where to find the relevant source code in binutils
> search the archives for the thread "abnormal linking time" which was in
> the middle of november 2003 on this list.

Thanks Heiko!!!! That explains a lot.
So I guess I need to find a bug in either Qt sources or in the linker so that 
--export-all-symbols will be unnecessary.

Kuba