Building statically linked applications without qmake

1. Although the Compiler Notes page (http://trolltech.com/developer/notes/compilers/gcc ) says "Trolltech supports gcc versions >= 3.2", it turns out that there's a problem with gcc 3.4. (http://trolltech.com/developer/task-tracker/index_html?id=161994&method=entry)

The bug report (#161994) provides a workaround, but this information was pretty hard to find.

Fixed: This information is included in the compiler notes documentation shipped with Qt. See http://doc.trolltech.com/4.3/compiler-notes.html

2. On the Mac, static applications must now be built with -fvisibility-inline-hidden. The Qt4 libraries use this flag and applications linking against it should also. For static Qt4 linkage, it is absolutely necessary or errors of the type "malformed object, illegal reference for dynamic code (reference to a coalesced section (_TEXT,textcoal_nt) from section (TEXT,_textcoal_nt) relocation entry" result.

3. Mac applications that are statically linked now need to be built with "-framework AppKit".

4. The way that plug-ins are handled in Qt 4.x has changed, requiring code changes involving a set of Qt macros (QT_STATICPLUGIN, Q_IMPORT_PLUGIN and Q_EXPORT_PLUGIN2).

The use of plug-ins in Qt 3.x was pretty transparent, but
it seems to be much, much more complex now.