When adding some files to INSTALLS, they are stripped if they are excecutables.

To avoid using strip, you can update "QMAKE_STRIP" variable and force stripping executables one by one using ".extra":

target.extra = strip $${DESTDIR}/$(TARGET)
QMAKE_STRIP = echo # Avoid striping unwanted files (which will not work)
applibs.files = $${DESTDIR}/*.so*
applibs.path = $$EXPORT_LIBPATH
INSTALLS += applibs