I am asking here because I couldn't get any support elsewhere. Also consider that I am quite a beginner so bear patience.
I am using Winlibs (winlibs.com, a ready to use mingw gcc10+ distribution) to code under Windows because after having tried other alternatives I judged it the best to my purposes, easiest to install and the most functional. I never had any problems with it.
But recently I had the need of writing some simple code to send a POST request. I wanted to do it in a possibly portable and c++ friendly manner, so I was suggested to use Curl. No libcurl is included in winlibs so I tried to load one from here
https://curl.se/download.html
I chose the windows 64 binary of course (7.83.1) since I am working on windows 64 with winlibs 64. I installed everything in the right place and linked against libcurl.a.
Unfortunately the linker complains of unresolved symbols so I have to supppose the curl binaries I used are not suitable.
How can I use libcurl with winlibs then ? Before bothering here I really googled but could find no info!
The MinGW-w64 tools from https://winlibs.com/ are only a build toolchain, so they don't contain libraries for you to link with (yet).
You need a Windows build of libcurl and use that.
To use it you must include the location to the header files using the -I compiler flag, and then link with the library by pointing to the location of the .a file with the -L linker flag and then link with the library using the -l flag (-lcurl in this case). If you don't have .a files you can also try to link with the full path of the .dll file and gcc will know it's a shared library.
An easier way is to get libcurl via MSYS2's pacman package manager.
If you want to statically link you need to use the output of pkg-config --static --libs libcurl as link flags.
In practice though I noticed that sometomes pkg-config --static --libs libcurl is missing some dependencies and you still need to add some manually. An example of a project of mine that builds on Windows with winlibs MinGW-w64 (both 32-bit and 64-bit) can be found at https://github.com/brechtsanders/winlibs_tools/blob/main/Makefile (specifically look for the definition of CURL_LDFLAGS)
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I'm pretty new to C++ and I'm having a hard time trying to install external libraries. I want to get started with GUI programming and I have searched all over, but I cannot find a way to add wxWidgets to Code::Blocks. I've tried a few different guides and Stack Overflow responses but none of them have actually worked.
I'm using this 'Hello World!' test program to see if it works, every time I try to run it I just get this error: fatal error: wx/wxprec.h: No such file or directory. I can't seem to figure out how to tell Code::Blocks where the library is.
The most recent resource I have tried is this one, I followed it step by step, but still I got this error.
What linker/compiler settings do I need to use in Code::Blocks? What lib files do I need to add and where do I add them to? Do I need to build the .zip file? How do I do this?
Please could I get a step by step guide on exactly how to add wxWidgets (or indeed any external library) to Code::Blocks as well as some information on why certain things are required?
Here's what I tried
Following the steps in the link above, this is what I have in my build options:
I tried adding this in my global compiler settings...
I still have this error...
CodeBlocks seems to have some special wxWidgets integration, but it didn't always work for me, so I prefer to set up the project manually.
CB ships an outdated compiler. While it may work, updating it is a good idea.
Get rid of the MinGW version shipped with CB, or at least remove it from the PATH.
Install MSYS2. Use it to install a new GCC and GDB, as described in the link.
Configure CB to use MSYS2's GCC and GDB, by specifying the paths to them in the CB config (they're installed to C:\msys64\mingw64\bin).
wxWidgets seem to ship prebuilt libraries for MinGW, but since we're using MSYS2, we might as well use the version provided by MSYS2.
Use MSYS2 to install wxWidgets: pacman -S mingw-w64-x86_64-wxWidgets3.2-msw.
MSYS2 seems to ship several different versions of wxWidgets: 3.0, 3.1, 3.2, and each of them in two variants: -msw and -gtk. 3.2-msw looks like a reasonable choice to me, but I haven't used this library before.
wxWidgets doesn't seem to use the standard way of telling you what compiler flags to use (which would be pkg-config, or at least a CMake file). Instead they ship their own script to determine the flags, called wx-config.
Run wx-config --cflags to get the compiler flags, and run wx-config --libs to get the linker flags. Paste them into the project settings (compiler settings and linker settings respectively). Edit the project settings, not the global compiler settings.
Ok, so, I'm trying to build a third party library with msys2 and I've run into a problem with a few headers, such as gtk.h; the library I'm trying to build expects this to be located via #include <gtk/gtk.h>.
Now, experience on Linux tells me that would be correct under a normal linux environment; however, in the case of gtk, it seems it would have to be gtk-3.0/gtk/gtk.h, which seems like an error in msys to me - is there some sort of selection step I've missed in setting up my msys2 environment? Like the 'eselect' system under Gentoo, something like 'pselect gtk-3.0' that would create a linked directory to gtk-3.0/gtk just called gtk?
Assuming that you have installed the mingw-w64-i686-gtk3 package with pacman and that you are running in a MinGW 32-bit shell (MSYS2 has three different flavors of shell that use different toolchains), you can run this command to get the required compile flags for GTK3:
pkg-config gtk+-3.0 --cflags
Most build systems have some kind of support for calling pkg-config. It is basically the standard way to get information about your dependencies.
When it's time to link your program, you should replace --cflags in the comand above with --libs.
You simply need to tell the compiler where to find the include directory:
-I/some/path/to/gtk-3.0
This may be obvious, but I want to make sure what to do before I do anything rash. I want to compile my C++ program, libraries and all, to a release executable such that the file can be run on any computer (running the same OS). Right now, I'm on Mac OS X (10.7.4) and I need to be able to run my executable on other Macs. The problem is I am using the OpenCV library in my project, and I only have it installed on this computer. Is there a way to compile with g++ such that if I open this program on a computer that doesn't have the OpenCV library installed, it will work anyway? As in, build all the dependencies into the executable. Or does this happen automatically?
I am also quite new to the ".o" object files, so can those have anything to do with it? I would prefer a way to get it all into a single file, but I'll settle for a package as long as it works.
Thank you.
To expand on molbdnilo's answer, you'll need to create an application bundle (see the Apple Bundle Programming guide). You'll need to move your console application to MyApp.app/Contents/MacOS/MyApp. There's also a Frameworks directory in which you'll need to add the OpenCV library as a framework. See the OpenCV Wiki for some information on the OpenCV framework. A framework (at its simplest) is pretty much a dynamic library wrapped in a particular directory structure.
I would suggest looking into using Xcode on the mac as it simplifies the construction of bundles and linking to frameworks compared to doing it yourself via scripting and Makefiles.
There are two ways to do this. You can static link if you aren't going to run into licensing issues with any of the libraries you are linking to. This is pretty easily handled by using g++ -o myApp -static -lopencv myapp.cpp However, this also depends on static libraries existing for the libraries you want to link to. Most distribute static libs with the shared libs these days.
The other way is to distribute the shared libraries and tell your application to force it to look in a certain spot for the shared library using -rpath. Note: I am telling you the Linux way to do this, it will probably work on a Mac but I have no way to test.
So say all of your shared libraries are in the same directory as your executable, you can compile with: g++ -rpath ./ -lopencv -o YourApp yourApp.cpp
I hope this helps.
I'm totally spinning my wheels with getting a couple of 3rd party libraries to work with my c++ programs. I'm looking for some general advice (40,000 foot level) about the general steps that one needs to take when implementing libraries.
First, some specifics: I am using code::blocks in Windows as my IDE. I like this IDE and really don't want to switch to anything else if I don't have to (I've tried visual c++ and also some things in linux). The libraries that I am trying to use are GMP and crypto++.
OK. What I think I know is this: After downloading the library, I unzip the file to a folder. I've been unzipping directly to C:\ with each zip file extracted to its own folder (e.g. c:\cryptopp and c:\gmp). I think that the next step is to build the library, but this is where I get totally stuck. How is this done? There are no executable files among those extracted. From what I can tell, I believe that I do this in code::blocks, but I have no idea how?
Finally, assuming that I can get this done, which I believe creates the .lib files, the last step before actually using the library in my code, is to link into the library. This part, I believe that I understand.
So, my question is broad: do I understand this process overall? And if so, how do I go about building these libraries, if in fact that it the thing that I am missing.
Thanks very much for indulging my ignorance. I'm totally rudderless right now and despite hours and hours on google, I'm making no progress. Also, feel free to correct anything that I have stated as fact that is not correct. Thanks a lot!
Usually libraries have a special file called makefile in them, and are built with a utility called Make (or one of it's variations, whatever works uder windows).
Usually all you have to do is to run Make in the directory where you have unpacked the source files, and it will do the rest itself.
If those libraries you mention (GMP and crypto++; disclaimer: I'm not familiar with either of them) don't have project files for code::blocks then you may still be able to compile them under Windows with MinGW.
If you have installed MinGW you use the MinGW shell to navigate to the appropriate directories which would be /c/cryptopp/ and /c/gmp in your examples - The MinGW shell works like a Unix shell, and has different naming conventions.
Then you need to compile the libraries. Check whether there's a Makefile in those directories, if there isn't you can check whether there's a configure script, which will generate the Makefile. If you have the Makefile you can type make which will compile the libraries with MinGW's port of the GCC compiler.
When the compilation is complete you should have a library in the form of a .a file (say libcryptopp.a) that you can link to your project. In code::blocks you would set the linker path (the -L command line option in GCC) to C:\cryptopp\bin or wherever the library has been compiled, and then add libcryptopp.a to the list of libraries you want to link (this is associated with the -l option in GCC). The convention is to leave out the lib prefix and the .a extension, so you would just add cryptopp to your library list. In the end your linker options should look like -LC:\cryptopp\bin -lcryptopp along with the
Also, to be able to use the libraries you need to add the path to the headers directory to the include path of your project. This is associated to the -I command line option in GCC, so your compiler's command line options would have something like -IC:\cryptopp\include somewhere.
Of course, all of the above assumes that you use code::blocks with GCC. If you're using it with VisualC++ then the principles are the same, but the specific steps differ.
Where can I find an writeup that shows me how to set up a tool chain for WxWidgets (C++) on linux/ubunto and/or OS X.
I downloaded, compiled & installed WxWidgets both on linux and OS X, compiled and tried the samples, but seem to be stuck setting up a compile environment in my own home directory.
DialogBlocks from http://www.dialogblocks.com looked promising, but it insists on recompiling WxWidgets again and again .. must be something about it I don't understand.
Writing code from scratch seems to fail due to a lack of paths to libraries, tools or whatnot .. again a lack og understanding on my part, I am sure.
So, can anyone point me to a tool chain setup, that has more than the bare minimum of instructions and fills in some of the "why" instead of only the minimal "what".
Like all C/C++ programs, the compiler has to know in what directories to look for include files, and the linker has to know what libraries it should link to.
The WxWidgets package, if installed correctly, includes the program wx-config. This can be used while compiling and linking, like so:
g++ $(wx-config --cxxflags) -c my_prog.cpp
g++ my_prog.o $(wx-config --libs) -o my_prog
I've found these two pages to be of help when setting up wxWidgets for Eclipse and MinGW.