Ideally, I want to compile our QT-based apps, which also link other third-party libraries, on 64-bit Linux using GCC, but for a 64-bit Windows target. Again ideally, I want the result to run on 64-bit Windows without any additional runtime support, just as if we had compiled the same source code in Visual Studio. Is this possible with MinGW-w64?
I have successfully used MinGW-w64 to compile simple apps with GCC on Windows. I'm not sure how much of the MinGW-w64 installation is runtime support for executables as opposed to support for the GCC compilation environment. I did attempt to run a WinGW-w64 hello world executable on an installation of Windows without MinGW-w64, but had missing dll errors. This tells me that some runtime support was necessary, but I would like to know more precisely what is required.
If you don't want to install Windows, I think the best way is using a Virtual Machine. That's because even if the source code compiles for Windows, how could it be verified to run? You will need a real target environment to finally test your application.
From a complexity point of view, I think setting up a Windows machine (VM or not) and the necessary environment for Qt is a whole lot simpler than cross compiling bug hunting afterwards.
You can install Qt on the installed Windows, copy your project there, compile it and see the results in the real environment. This way you can cope with the minor differences when porting from one OS to another easily.
Nothing stops you from developing on Linux. You can do the entire development on Linux and just test the code on the prepared Windows by compiling and running. Sending the code to the Windows environment is simple by using git. The development process can be like :
Make a repository of your application, clone the repository both on Linux and Windows
Do the Major development on Linux and push
Pull on Windows from time to time, compile, test and make minor fixes and then push
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I compiled and ran a C++ program using Eclipse on my MacBook Pro. I now need to convert the Unix executable to a windows executable. How do I go about this? Specifally, how do I get this code to run on a Windows machine from the command prompt?
The only way you can get the unix executable to run on a Windows system is using a virtual machine (Something like VMWare or VirtualBox). This isn't REALLY running it on Windows, of course, it's setting up a UNIX system on Windows and running it on that UNIX system.
The executables (and the needed runtime environment) are vastly different between the two systems, you can't just run executables from one on the other.
Your only other option is to setup Eclipse on your Windows system and compile the application there.
You cannot "convert" an executable, you need to recompile for your target system. If you are using a GCC toolchain that is set up for Eclipse and there is no Mac specific code, it should be as easy as moving the project over, setting it up in Eclipse, and recompiling it. If that is too much of a hassle, you can consider setting up a Makefile and using MingW or Cygwin, or even Visual Studio if you'd like. If there is Mac specific code, then you need to look up the appropriate Windows documentation, or use something cross-platform like GTK+ or Qt.
I have an application written in C++ using wxWidgets. How can I compile it for Linux and Unix os like Debian, FreeBSD, CentOS, in Windows?
Thanks!
Not entirely sure if I understood the question, but I think you are asking if you can compile an application for linux using a compiler in the windows environment.
My short answer: No, but.
The but: You may be able to use Cygwin in windows, however I think there is an easier way. If you are uncomfortable with setting up your computer to have multiple partitions and installing linux on at least one of these partitions, you can use VirtualBox, VMWare, or similar virtualization software to "install" linux on your windows machine. From there you can set up build environments and such. As for how, I would leave your windows build as is, but then in create a Makefile for Linux (or use CMake to replace both your windows-specific builder (the vsproj if using visual studio, etc) and linux-specific builder (make)) so that your source will compile both on windows and linux without having to modify the actual code or project.
i would recommend to use CMake as build system
MY code will be deployed on FreeBSD. Would I be able to code using VS2010 in Win7? can this be done on Linux using gcc? or do I need to have freebsd installed on my laptop.
I plan on buying a new ultrabook and not sure FreeBSD will support the drivers or wireless. What the best practice here? VMs?
Thanks mods.
You can just write code in Visual Studio, however you will not be able to compile and run it in Windows, unless you are only using standard libraries.
To compile and test your code you need a FreeBSD somewhere.
I have never used FreeBSD on a laptop, so I can't say if dualbooting it with Windows is a good idea.
The best thing would be if you had access to a test server with the same configuration as your production server (i.e. same FreeBSD version, same packages, etc.). Then you could write code in VS, check it into a repository, SSH to the server, update a local copy of the source there and build.
If that is not an option, I recommend setting up a virtual environment. Download VirtualBox, obtain FreeBSD and install it on the VM. Set up port forwarding for SSH and then the process is pretty much the same as with a separate server. You may have to make some additional tweaks depending on the nature of the work you'll be doing.
Here is a setup I have used in cases where I am not using any OS specific library.
On your Windows 7 machine develop your application as usual without using MFC/ATL etc. If you are linking to external libraries/APIs you will have to use one which is portable across Windows and Linux (e.g. Boost libraries). Do not use pre-compiled headers (stdfax.h) or any other option which is Windows specific.
Get VirtualBox and install your favorite OS (FreeBSD in this case) and your favorite tool chain (gcc clang)
Share the disk/folder you are developing your app in the Windows file system so that it is visible in VirtualBox. In Ubuntu they end up in the /media/sf_Folder.
Compile in FreeBSD in VirtualBox. You will need to have an alternative make system setup in parallel in addition to the stuff Visual Studio creates. Make sure you do not have any conflicts in the way the directories used by the build system (to store object files etc.) between FreeBSD and Windows. You can try out this http://code.google.com/p/make-it-so/ to convert your VS solutions to gcc makefiles.
This way you can continue to use your favorite IDE and also rebuild on your target *ix OS on the same machine.
gcc + gvim + ( ( ctags with omnicppcomplete ) or ( clang with clang_complete ) and STL + Boost.
I'm working on a program which uses autotools for its build system and compiles fine on linux. To build for windows I'm trying to get a mingw cross-compiler working for windows. Now when I compile on linux and move to windows of course I am missing some dll's that are not installed by default on windows. This leads to missing dll errors. I cannot statically link my program due to restrictions in the LGPL.
So my question is what is the correct way to cross compile in this situation? I feel like I need to wrap my exe in a installer which automatically resolves and installs the dll dependencies for windows but I haven't been able to locate something explaining how to do this. Basically I'm thinking of yum/apt-get for windows. How do I manage dll dependencies on windows? I'm a linux guy, not a windows guy, so please bear with me.
Probably the easiest thing would be if you could move your development to a Windows machine. But short of that, you could install Windows-Mingw on your Linux machine using Wine. (IIRC winetricks has even a target for this) That way you get a "feel" for the issues on windows. An alternative could be Windows in a virtual machine, but Wine should be ok for a development environment.
I also strongly suggest that you install Microsoft Visual C++. The express versions will do fine. There are a number of tools coming with MSVC++ that can make your life a lot easier, like dll-dependency checker etc. An additional excellent source of information are the Sysinternals tools from Mark Russinovich and his blog.
I have a small piece of code that works as a plugin for a larger graphics application. The development platform is Qt with c++ code. I've managed to build a .so, .dylib and .dll for linux, MacOS and Windows respectively, but to do so I had to have a machine running each operating system (in my case, running linux [ubuntu] gcc natively, and windows MinGW and MacOS XCode gcc in virtual machines).
Is there a way to build for all 3 platforms from one? I beat my head against this problem a while back, and research to date suggests that it's not easily (or feasibly) done. The code only needs to link against a single header that defines the plugin
API and is built from a fairly basic Makefile (currently with small variations per platform).
You should have a look at crosscompiling.
You basically build a compiler that (on your current plattform) will output binaries for your desired platforms.
Try this link about doing it on linux, for windows, with QT
Better late than never, I just came across IMCROSS
It looks quite promising!
For Linux it is fairly easy to setup or even download a virtual machine using VMWare for instance. Getting OSX to run on VMWare is somewhat tricky but possible.
Running VMWare and sharing a directory on a local drive you can even compile for the different platforms using the same exact files.
There is somewhere a cross-compiler for OSX but I wouldn't trust it to be of great quality.