macdeployqt not copying plugins

Question

I'm developing a Qt-based application and when I use macdeployqt on the bundle, the Qt plugins are not copied to the bundle.

However, if I run it a second time, they are. Additionally, "The svg icon plugin is deployed if the application uses the QtSvg module." is not fullfilled - my application does use QtSvg but the iconengines/* plugin is not copied.

I tried running it with -verbose=3, and the last couple lines are:

Log: Created configuration file: "silverlock.app/Contents/Resources/qt.conf" 
Log: This file sets the plugin search path to "silverlock.app/Contents/PlugIns" 

From what the last message says, it kind of seems that it intended to continue running, but didn't - almost as if it crashed.

Why is this happening? macdeployqt has worked for me before without issue.

Using:

• Qt 4.6
• Qt Creator 2.0
• Leopard 10.5.8

Answer 1

The problem lies at lines 355-365 of shared.cpp in the macdeployqt source:

while (frameworks.isEmpty() == false) {
    const FrameworkInfo framework = frameworks.takeFirst();
    copiedFrameworks.append(framework.frameworkName);

    // Get the qt path from one of the Qt frameworks;
    if (deploymenInfo.qtPath.isNull() && framework.frameworkName.contains("Qt") 
        && framework.frameworkDirectory.contains("/lib"))
    {
            deploymenInfo.qtPath = framework.frameworkDirectory;
            deploymenInfo.qtPath.chop(5); // remove "/lib/"
    }

The first framework/dylib name in your bundle that has "Qt" in its name is taken to determine the plugin path. Since the first framework/dylib name in my bundle was "QtSolutions_QtSingleApplication-2.6"... you get the picture. So I suppose a workaround is to rename the dylib to "qsa-2.6.dylib" or something.

In a nutshell: make sure your framework and library names don't have "Qt" in them or you'll run into issues with macdeployqt.

Hopefully this answer may help someone having the same issue.