What is this?
Upstream gLabels 4 (glabels-qt) is cross-platform and builds fine on Windows, but the
project does not currently ship Windows binaries — you are expected to install Visual
Studio, Qt, CMake and a handful of libraries and build it yourself.
This repository does that for you, in public, on GitHub's own runners. Every release is
produced by one workflow file from unmodified
upstream sources, so you can read exactly how the binary you downloaded was made — and
reproduce it yourself by forking this repo and pressing Run workflow.
Download
Grab the files from the latest release:
| File | Use it if… |
|---|
gLabels--win64-setup.exe | You want a normal installation: Start-menu and desktop shortcuts, .glabels file association, clean uninstaller. |
gLabels--win64-portable.zip | You want to run it from a USB stick or without installing anything. Unzip anywhere and run bin\glabels-qt.exe. |
SHA256SUMS.txt | You want to verify what you downloaded. |
Requirements: 64-bit Windows 10 or 11. Nothing else — Qt and the C runtime are bundled.
Package managers
winget — ✅ live. Merged in
winget-pkgs#406476 and published to
the official index:
winget install ibsorn.gLabels
Chocolatey — submitted as
glabels-qt, waiting in the moderation queue. Once approved, choco install glabels-qt
will work.
Scoop — not eligible yet. The Extras bucket requires the latest stable
version of a package, and gLabels 4 has no stable release. The manifest is written and
ready in scoop/ for the day upstream tags 4.0.
Verifying a download
Get-FileHash .\gLabels-3.99-master639-win64-setup.exe -Algorithm SHA256
Compare the result with the matching line in SHA256SUMS.txt.
“Windows protected your PC”
The installer is not code-signed (a certificate costs several hundred euros a year), so
SmartScreen shows a warning the first time. Choose More info → Run anyway, or use the
portable ZIP instead. The SHA-256 sums above, the build log of every release, and the
workflow file are all public so you can check what you are running.
What's inside
| |
|---|
| Application | gLabels 4 development snapshot (glabels-qt, master) |
| Toolchain | MSVC 2022, 64-bit, Release |
| Qt | 6.8.x LTS, deployed with windeployqt |
| Barcodes | built-in glbarcode++, zint and libqrencode |
| Compressed projects | zlib |
| Extras | full upstream template database (35+ vendors) and all translations |
| Also included | glabels-batch-qt.exe, the command-line renderer |
Every build runs the upstream unit tests plus a smoke test that renders a PDF from the
packaged tree, so a release can only be published if the deployed binaries actually run.
Status
gLabels 4 is still under active development upstream — there is no final 4.0 release yet.
What you get here are snapshots of the master branch, rebuilt weekly and whenever
upstream changes are picked up. They are usable, but treat them as pre-release software
and keep backups of your projects.
A published release is immutable: the weekly rebuild only publishes when upstream has
actually moved (a new commit count means a new version and a new tag). It never overwrites
the assets of a version that already exists, because a rebuild of the same commit is
byte-different — MSVC and NSIS embed timestamps — and overwriting would change the SHA-256
that the winget and Chocolatey manifests pin.
Building it yourself
Fork this repository and use Actions → Build gLabels for Windows → Run workflow. You
can point it at any upstream branch, tag or commit, and optionally have it publish a
release in your own fork. Nothing besides a GitHub account is required.
Locally, follow the
upstream Windows build instructions.
Note that the process is reproducible, not the bytes: MSVC and NSIS embed timestamps, so
rebuilding the same commit gives you a working, equivalent binary with a different SHA-256.
The published sums identify a specific release, they are not a build fingerprint.
Any local fixes needed to build a given upstream revision live in patches/
as plain git apply patches, each with a header explaining why it exists and what would
make it removable. The packaging metadata (installer name, icons, file association) lives
in packaging/. No gLabels source code is modified beyond those patches.
Bugs
- Something wrong with the installer, packaging, or a missing DLL → open an issue here.
- Something wrong with gLabels itself → report it upstream, where the people who can fix it are.
Credits and licence
gLabels is written by Jaye Evins and contributors. This repository contains no gLabels
source code — only build automation — but the binaries it produces are gLabels and are
distributed under the GNU General Public License v3
like the original. The corresponding source for every release is the upstream commit named
in the release notes.
This is an unofficial community build and is not endorsed by or affiliated with the
gLabels project.
