You can, but then you have 50MB of useless DLLs that static linking would eliminate. At that point you have the same disk footprint as an electron app. Memory use would still be order of a magnitude better though.
Qt is split into modules, so if you don't use Webkit you don't include that module, if you don't use networking you don't include that, if you only do a CLI app you don't include the GUI module.
I just checked VLC now and the Windows download has 38Mb, Qupzilla installer has 78Mb(this is a browser so it bundles webkit and probably some js enbine),
I am familiar with this complaint , at a previous workpolace we switched to Adobe AIR because of the installer size (the boss felt better if the customers installed AIR from Adobe and then our 2 Mb installer). At that time Qt did not had a built in way to create installers, signing them, and autoupdate applications,(not sure it has now) Adobe AIR had such mechanism so this also was a factor on switching to this toolkit then.
So if you think Qt is big what would you use instead?
You misread my original comment, and the follow up.
I thought you were being smart with 50 megabits in your earlier comment or I would have caught that misunderstanding earlier.
You did not mention what cross platform tool is smaller and works with proprietary software.1