title: qt rcc (resource compiler) is non-deterministic - how to make it deterministic
body: <p>I have a command in my makefile that uses the <a href="http://qt.apidoc.info/5.2.0/qtcore/resources.html" rel="nofollow">Qt resource compiler</a>. <br/>
  This utility produces a static array for each image file passed to it.<br/>
  Unfortunately, <code>rcc.exe</code> is non-deterministic: the order of these arrays inside the generated <code>.cpp</code> file is different for each invocation.<br/></p>
  
  <p>I ran it three times:</p>
  
  <pre><code>&gt;C:\rcc.exe -name lookupmodels lookupmodels.qrc -o .qrc/qrc_lookupmodels-1.cpp
  
  &gt;C:\rcc.exe -name lookupmodels lookupmodels.qrc -o .qrc/qrc_lookupmodels-2.cpp
  
  &gt;C:\rcc.exe -name lookupmodels lookupmodels.qrc -o .qrc/qrc_lookupmodels-3.cpp
  </code></pre>
  
  <p>The <code>.qrc</code> file is:</p>
  
  <pre><code>&lt;RCC&gt;
      &lt;qresource prefix="/"&gt;
          &lt;file&gt;datapool_pdal1.csv&lt;/file&gt;
          &lt;file&gt;events_Ic.csv&lt;/file&gt;
          &lt;file&gt;events_Evt.csv&lt;/file&gt;
          &lt;file&gt;events_Other.csv&lt;/file&gt;
          &lt;file&gt;key_events.csv&lt;/file&gt;
          &lt;file&gt;loglevel_DPvalues.csv&lt;/file&gt;
          &lt;file&gt;loglevel_Evtvalues.csv&lt;/file&gt;
          &lt;file&gt;log_freqDP.csv&lt;/file&gt;
      &lt;/qresource&gt;
  &lt;/RCC&gt;
  </code></pre>
  
  <p>Being arrays of <code>static const unsigned char</code>, the <code>.cpp</code> files are huge so I won't show them here but the basic problem is that the order of these arrays, which represent images, changes from one invocation to the next.</p>
  
  <p><strong>ISSUE</strong></p>
  
  <p>To compare build to build - especially since I'm switching build systems - I need to be able to <strong>compare artifacts.</strong></p>
  
  <p>I would like them to not change so that I can compare artifact output from build to build to see if something has changed or not.</p>
  
  <p>This is the ONLY object file that is giving me this issue.</p>