Thank you for the link, so --self-contained will results in "a folder that has our exe and everything that is required to run it (...) a little over 200 files" while /p:PublishSingleFile=true will result in a 70MB file for a simple hello world. This kind of confirms my cheap satire :D it is nice this is an option now but the mess and size is crazy. Statically built Qt programs for Windows, with a GUI, are usually around 10MB for a simple app.