Is is possible to compile c++ code on linux using g++ and run the code on Mac OSX? I have a few c++ programs that use one .cpp file, a few .h files, and a MakeFile altogether that produces a .o file that I typically run through the terminal. However, I'd like to find a way to send only the executable to my partner's home mac so he may review my program locally. (I've also use a few of these programs for automated math calculations, so it would be very convenient to run locally). I understand OSX typically uses .app bundles, but I'm not extremely familiar with how this works. Will the .o file (or ./a.out that's more common around here) simply run on OSX? I'd rather not install xCode on this machine if I don't have to.
Thanks a ton
It is possible to compile C++ on Linux and produce an executable on OS X. However you have to compile the code in a special way, called 'cross compilation'. It's not particularly simple to set up cross compilation and you need certain files from the platform you're targeting.
It's much simpler to just compile directly on the target platform.
If the Mac has a recent version of OS X installed you can easily install the necessary command line tools: Just try to run one of them or run the command xcode-select --install and OS X will ask to install the command line tools. (This will install just the necessary tools for compilation on the command line, and not the entire Xcode applicaiton.)
I understand OSX typically uses .app bundles, but I'm not extremely familiar with how this works.
You don't need to worry about .app bundles for simple C++ programs. OS X can run regular executable files just like linux. (Though the executable file format is different: OS X uses the Mach-O format instead of Linux's ELF format.)
Will the .o file (or ./a.out that's more common around here) simply run on OSX?
.o files, called 'object' files, don't run on their own anyway; They have to be 'linked' into an executable file. The default name for executable files created by the gcc toolchain is 'a.out' (as specified in the POSIX standard).
If you set up cross compilation to OS X then, yes, you could produce a.out files that would just run on OS X. The a.out files you produce normally for Linux , i.e. without cross compilation, won't run on OS X.
I'd rather not install xCode on this machine if I don't have to.
Xcode doesn't run on Linux anyway, so you couldn't run it. Instead you'd get a version of gcc that cross-compiles to OS X, or you'd install a different compiler, clang (and linker, lld instead of ld or gold).
A simple answer to your question is no. You cannot compile a program under linux and expect it to run on MacOSX.
However, MacOSX is just another UNIX OS under the hood and you can build your project with Make and GCC. If your partner doesn't know how to do this, I would suggest asking him to let you SSH into his machine.
However, if you're building executable on a mac you will want to install XCode. Even if you're using GCC from brew.
Another alternative is have your partner install a linux VM. He can use oracles virtual box to install linux and run your code w/in macosx.
I would suggest you sign up at Amazon for a free EC2 (Elastic Compute Cloud) account and take the free Basic Linux box. Install and build your software on Linux on there and then let your partner log into it and run it using just ssh which is already on OSX anyway. So no need to install anything on his Mac.
That way there is no need to transfer files between yourselves and update stuff when you make changes - just one environment to manage and keep up to date that you can both access from anywhere, any time.
Related
I develop c++ apps on linux and i use neovim with coc.nvim and coc-clangd plugins.
I want to develop an app for windows but i comfort with linux and neovim so i want to use them for it. But i get some include errors with some windows headers (etc. "windows.h").
I use linux only for writing the code and i'll compile the program on windows. How can i prevent this errors and use windows headers with coc.nvim?
i'll compile the program on windows
You can cross-compile it from Linux. It's only marginally more difficult than getting the code completion to work.
Get the standard library headers (and libraries, if you want to cross-compile) from MinGW.
Your package manager might have those, or you can get them from https://winlibs.com/.
I prefer getting those from MSYS2, and made scripts to automate this (since MSYS2 is otherwise Windows-only):
git clone https://github.com/holyblackcat/quasi-msys2
cd quasi-msys2/
make install _gcc
Figure out the Clang flags needed to cross-compile.
Unlike GCC, which for every target platform requires a separate compiler distribution, Clang is inherently a cross-compiler. You only need a single Clang distribution to compile for any supported platform.
Download Clang from your package manager, and point it to the freshly downloaded headers and libraries.
Following flags work for me: clang++-14 1.cpp --target=x86_64-w64-mingw32 --sysroot=/path/to/quasi-msys2/root/mingw64 -fuse-ld=lld-14 -pthread -stdlib=libstdc++ -femulated-tls -rtlib=libgcc.
--target and --sysroot are crucial. The latter needs to point to the files you've downloaded. The remaining flags are less important.
Running this should produce a.exe, runnable with wine a.exe.
Feed the same flags to Clangd.
There are several ways to set compiler flags for Clangd.
The easiest one is to create a file named compile_flags.txt in your project directory, and put the flags into it, one per line:
--target=x86_64-w64-mingw32
--sysroot=/path/to/quasi-msys2/root/mingw64
-fuse-ld=lld-14
-pthread
-stdlib=libstdc++
-femulated-tls
-rtlib=libgcc
Then Clangd should do the right thing for any source files in this directory.
Apparently, my Quasi-MSYS2 can somewhat automate this.
After running the commands above (make install _gcc and others), run make env/shell.sh, and run your editor from this shell.
Replace compiler_flags.txt with compiler_commands.json with following contents:
[
{
"directory": "/your/sources",
"file": "/your/sources/1.cpp",
"command": "win-clang++ 1.cpp"
}
]
Where win-clang++ is a Clang wrapper I ship, which automatically adds the flags I listed above.
Configure your editor to add following flag to Clangd: --query-driver=/path/to/win-clang++ (use which win-clang++ from quasi-msys2 shell to get the full path).
This makes Clangd obtain the right flags automatically from this wrapper.
You can't use windows.h while you're compiling a Linux native application. If want to make your application platform ready and you're using some kind of OS native cals, then you have to probably use defines like #if _WIN32/__linux__ and so on. At the end, you can cross-compile your application to Windows while you're running on Linux as well.
I would like to move from Visual Studio on Windows platform to Eclipse on Ubuntu for c++ development, since I develop almost all my programs on Java, with Eclipse, and I just use a Windows virtual machine in order to develop C++ programs for Win OS. So if I would be happy being able to not use Windows VM at all. However, I've managed to configure MinGW and Eclipse successfully enough to compile programs, but not to execute them.
Steps I've gone through so far:
I've installed mingw32 package and dependencies:
$ sudo apt-get install mingw32
I've installed Eclipse Mars for C/C++ development (manually, to keep this installation isolated from other Eclipses I have) and created a new project in this way:
- New C++ project.
- [...]
- Cross-prefix: i586-mingw32msvc-
- Cross path: /usr/bin/
With this configuration I'm able to correctly build a .exe which I can successfully execute on Windows, but when trying to debug it or execute it under Eclipse I get this error: "cannot execute binary file".
Googleing I've seen some posts suggesting to use wine in order to execute the .exe, but I thought mingw32 would be able to execute it. Am I wrong and this is not possible or just doing something wrong?
Mingw32 is a windows compiler, and will compile source to a Windows executable file. Additionally, the compiler cannot execute files (as worded in the question), it just compiles the source code to an executable form, in this case the windows executable (*.exe). So yes, in order to run the .exe in Ubuntu you would need something like Wine which emulates a Windows environment
mingw is a set of GNU tools for building native Windows executables.
It does not execute anything.
If you really want to cross-compile for Windows, you need Windows or an emulator for the execution.
To build for Ubuntu you can just use the native compilers.
sudo apt-get install gcc
I'm trying to port a linux software in Windows.
My software depends on gtk, boost and libgerbv (which I've manually compiled on cygwin)
I've successfully compiled it and it works if I run it in the cygwin's terminal, but if I copy the .exe in a folder with cygwin1.dll and I run it, it terminates silently
Same result if I run it within cmd.exe.
How can I "export" this executable outside the cygwin environment? I want to distribute it with just the needed shared libraries and cygwin1.dll
Thanks
"How can I "export" this executable outside the cygwin environment?"
In short: That's not possible. You'll need to have a cygwin environment installed on the target machine, and run the programs created in cygwin from a cygwin shell.
Cygwin requires a number of it's own .dll files, to bind to the underlying Windows OS. These cannot be just copied to another windows system without having a complete installation of cygwin.
Here're some more details about this: What is the difference between Cygwin and MinGW?
That's why I prefer to use MinGW to target windows systems portably. Cygwin has it's powers and right to exist, when it comes to cross compile code for different (e.g. embedded) targets running on windows as host.
What is the equivalent of ./configure in Windows?
Sometimes I download a C/C++ library and when I use the make it, it says "use ./configure" but obviously ./configure can only be used on a Linux machine and the libraries don't usually have instructions for compiling on Windows (although they do support Windows, they don't provide instructions).
For example, the library wxSVG says it works on Windows, but when I download it I don't see any instructions for compiling on Windows, and I only Linux files for configuring it.
I just faced with the same issue and here is what I did,
I first installed MinGw using the installation manager (with msys base included). Then I go to C:\MinGW\msys\1.0\ folder in my pc, where msys.bat (to evoke the MinGW shell) and run it. Then on that bash screen, I navigated to the folder that I wanted to install initially. After that, using "./configure" and "make" worked just fine.
Actually, ./configure is not Linux-specific at all. Its original purpose was to smooth over the differences between the many variants of Unix now thankfully relegated to the dust heap of history, but nowadays it may well know how to set up things to work on Windows.
I would install the MinGW/MSYS development tools and see if the configure script is happy in that environment. (If that doesn't work, I can't help you any further.)
./configure is a script that comes with the source you have downloaded. You will use it the same on windows as you do on any other operating system. Unfortunately, you will need a posix-like shell to run it. A good option for that is to use mingw or cygwin
I'd say that this is program dependant. You see "configure" is a program/script in the local directory, it's not a global command/program (like "dir" would be)...
You either have luck to find something like "configure.bat" or "configure.cmd", or you'd have to adapt the configure-file into a BATCH-file.
You only run the ./configure command when building certain applications from source.
So Unzip it where you want to install it and then go to the folder where you unziped it and run "./configure"
Is there a manual for cross-compiling a C++ application from Linux to Windows?
Just that. I would like some information (links, reference, examples...) to guide me to do that.
I don't even know if it's possible.
My objective is to compile a program in Linux and get a .exe file that I can run under Windows.
The basics are not too difficult:
sudo apt-get install mingw32
cat > main.c <<EOF
int main()
{
printf("Hello, World!");
}
EOF
i586-mingw32msvc-cc main.c -o hello.exe
Replace apt-get with yum, or whatever your Linux distro uses. That will generate a hello.exe for Windows.
Once you get your head around that, you could use autotools, and set CC=i586-mingw32msvc-cc
CC=i586-mingw32msvc-cc ./configure && make
Or use CMake and a toolchain file to manage the build. More difficult still is adding native cross libraries. Usually they are stored in /usr/cross/i586-mingw32msvc/{include,lib} and you would need to add those paths in separately in the configure step of the build process.
It depends on what you mean (I couldn't really say).
If you mean that you want to use an existing Linux application on Windows, then you could try compiling it using Cygwin on Windows. This however does not give you a Windows executable free from all dependencies towards Cygwin (your executable still depends on the cygwin.dll file) - and it still may need some porting before it will work. See http://www.cygwin.com.
If you mean that you want to be able to perform the actual compilation of a Windows application on Linux and produce a .exe file that is executable on Windows - thus using your Linux box for development and/or compilation then you should look into MinGW for Linux which is a tool for crosscompiling for Windows on Linux. See http://www.mingw.org/wiki/LinuxCrossMinGW.
Best regards!
I suggest you give the following, GUB (Grand Unified Builder) a try as it cross-compiles several packages with their dependencies and assembles them into a single installation package for currently 11 architectures. You can download a prebuilt iso for installation in a VM from here and follow the source here. It can currently be used to cross-compile GNU LilyPond/ GNU Denemo / Inkscape and OpenOffice.org.
The target architectures are:
darwin-ppc - tar.bz2 file for Darwin 7 (MacOS 10.3)/PowerPC
darwin-x86 - tar.bz2 file for Darwin 8 (MacOS 10.4)/x86
mingw - mingw executable for Windows32
linux-x86 - shar archive for Linux/x86
linux-64 - shar archive for Linux/x86_64
linux-ppc - shar archive for Linux/PowerPC
freebsd-x86 - shar archive for FreeBSD 4/x86
freebsd-64 - shar archive for FreeBSD 6/x86_64
cygwin - .tar.bz2 packages for Cygwin/Windows32
arm - shar archive for Linux/ARM (largely untested)
debian - shar archive for Debian (largely untested)