MinGW/gcc 4.4

The current version of Qt Creator (1.2.1) ships with a free compiler based on gcc 3.4.5 which is now 5 years old. This compiler is free, so I can't complain too much, but it generates EXE/DLL files which are much larger than their MSVC equivalents (usually 15%-20% larger, sometimes up to 50%) and, by all accounts, slower code. Qt Creator itself is built using MSVC, and I have also built Qt from source using MSVC in both shared and static forms (details on how to do this next week.) I tend to use the MinGW Qt toolset for debug builds (as the debugging helpers for gdb are better) and the static MSVC version of Qt for release builds.

However, there is a new version of the MinGW toolset which includes a shiny new version of gcc (v4.4). By all accounts this is a much faster compiler that generates better code. This toolset will hopefully ship with Qt 4.6.

Although MSVC is a superb compiler, I don't want to have to depend on it, so I look forward to gcc 4.4. Having versions of Qt built with different compilers is an interesting exercise for the user but is ultimately a pain in the arse to manage.

Note that disabling support for exception handling can mean smaller executables when building with gcc, but I haven't tried this and am not sure how I can specify the relevant compiler options from Qt Creator itself.