Deploying a Qt Application on Windows

The other day I created a simple widget-based application with Qt 5.2.1. Here is a summary of what I needed for deployment. The application should already be built in release mode. The required DLL files are in the following directories.

Qt5.2.1\5.2.1\msvc2012\bin Qt5.2.1\5.2.1\msvc2012\bin\plugins

I ran the executable and kept adding DLLs based on the runtime errors that appeared. Along the way, I ran into the error below, and adding platforms/qwindow.dll did not solve it.

The root cause turned out to be that libEGL.dll was missing. After adding it, the error no longer occurred. The final folder structure looked like this.

*.exe icudt51.dll icuin51.dll icuuc51.dll libEGL.dll libGLESv2.dll Qt5Core.dll Qt5Gui.dll Qt5Widgets.dll

It worked even without platforms\qwindow.dll.

• Qt 5.1.1: Application failed to start because platform plugin “windows” is missing