title: Qt installation directory woes
body: <p>I want to use Qt in my new project. An installer for my target compiler (VS2010 64bit), does not exist. </p>
  
  <p>I am using Windows 7 64-bit with Qt 5.1.1.</p>
  
  <p>A colleague of mine is also planning on using Qt and has managed to compile it for my target compiler (which he uses as well). He has built it in some directory, say DirA. He graciously gives me a copy of his entire Qt SDK build (binaries, examples, headers, and all), and I copy it to DirB on my machine. </p>
  
  <p>I need it in DirB, because that is where all my 3rd party libraries are installed, and my CMake scripts know how to find them. I also added the Qt bin folder to my path.</p>
  
  <p>Problems ensue. Qt binaries for some reason have the install path (in this case the build path) hard coded within them. So even though the Qt bin folder is in my path (so DLLs are found), Qt's DLL(s) are looking in the wrong place for the windows "plugin". They are looking in DirA, which does not exist on my machine.</p>
  
  <p>So from what I found researching, using a qt.conf file specifying the install path root, is supposed to be the way to go. I add one to my Qt bin dir, and now Qt binaries (assistant, qmake, etc) can run.</p>
  
  <p>But now I build one of the examples. Builds fine. Run the exe, Qt DLLs load, and then it crashes because it can't find plugin directory. </p>
  
  <p>A work-around my colleague and I found that seems to work, is to copy my qt.conf file to the directory my exe resides in. After doing that the exe runs. </p>
  
  <p>But this does not seem right. My exe can find the Qt DLLs, but the Qt DLLs it loads can't find qt.conf. They don't know to look in their own containing folder. I must have qt.conf in my working directory (my exe dir) for it to be found and used.</p>
  
  <p>Does anyone know why this might be happening, and know of a way for me not to be forced to have a qt.conf file in my exe's dir? I can't accept this requires a rebuild of Qt. There must be some other way.</p>