How to distribute an application with libraries?

Question

I wrote a Qt C++ application and want to deploy it on Windows, OSX and Linux. The problem is, it only works on machines where Qt is installed.

How would I make it work on computers that don't have Qt? Do I have to install it with an application setup or something? I don't get the whole linking thing.

Answer 1

There is nice tools for prepare application for distribution. Its macdeployqt for OSX and windeployqt for Windows. They copy all dependencies into application folder, so you can just copy that folder to another machine. For linux you need create package. This specific for different linux version. Read more about deployment here