How do I create a OS-neutral run configuration in Eclipse? - c++

I would like to have a single run configuration that I can use whether I'm testing on a Windows system or a Unix system.
Everything seems to be fine with the exception that in the run configurations dialog the field for C/C++ Application requires the extension of the application as well.
So in Windows, it is: Path/To/Application.exe
and on a Unix system, it is: Path/To/Application
If there was someway to automatically detect the OS and apply the appropriate extension, I can share the same *.launch file with everyone working on the project regardless of their operating system.
I've looked a little bit into using Variables to set the path and file name, but most of them require additional dialogs and user inputs. Wild cards don't seem to work here either.
Any ideas?

Thanks to Marc K. for pointing out the quick fix of simply adding ".exe" extensions to the unix executables. Though, as he mentions, this isn't a perfect fix to the problem.

Related

How to set a Qt application to use the actual environment variables of a unix-like system?

I'm creating a Qt gui application using a library which searches the PATH environment variable for certain executables, namely compilers, make and cmake.
The problem is that std::getenv("PATH") returns something different in the gui and certain executables are missed. I've tried to use the QProcessEnvironment class to the set the PATH, however, the same problem arises. I can set it to specific paths in my machine but it would be great if it could get the PATH of any machine the application is deployed to.
Strangely if I start the gui using the command-line, everything works out fine! Although I find it unreasonable to ask users to open the gui using the command line.
Any help would be greatly appreciated.
This problem has nothing to do with Qt. You've set the PATH using shell initialization scripts and such, in your own user folder. It'd be a terribly bad idea for the graphical shell to use that path, as a mistake in your shell profile would potentially make the entire desktop non-functional. Of course it works from the command line, since your shell profiles take effect then.
You could, as a user configuration option, extract the shell PATH by running the equivalent of user's $SHELL -c 'echo $PATH', and processing the result.
Otherwise, you'll have to defer to what's customary on the platform, and consult package managers if needed. Different package systems tend to install these tools in different directories, but there is just a few common ones. I presume it'd be enough to cover Ubuntu, RedHat, macports and homebrew, and make sure that you check in "pure" FHS (Filesystem Hierarchy Standard) locations as well.

How do I turn my C++ code into a .app file? [duplicate]

I am building a C++ OpenGL card game in Xcode 4.3.3, with the intention of running it on both 64-bit and 32-bit Macs, which is not my problem. My problem is that I have reached a point in the development of the program where I would like to test that it works on a different 32-bit Mac (mine is 64-bit) without having to install Xcode. This, obviously, requires me exporting it as an .app. I can find and run the exported Unix Executable File from my project, after some cd'ing, through Terminal, but that is undesirable for me and the intended audience of the program. I have trawled the google and Stack Overflow, looking for anything to help me, but all the things mentioning Archiving seem to have been unsuccessful with my particular project, and I think that's because it's a C++ command line tool project. So, can someone please help me export my project as a .app?
Thanks in advance.
The simplest way of doing this would be to create a Cocoa project, go to 'build phases' and remove all the objective-c frameworks from the 'link with libraries' build phase, remove any objective-c files added by the template (app delegate, etc.) and then replace main.c with your main.cpp file.
There's nothing really special about a Cocoa project except for the fact that it links against Cocoa and calls NSApplicationMain() from its main() function.
There are also a bunch of .plist entries used by Cocoa which you'll no longer need. But they won't affect the way OS X treats your application.
I'm searching for an XCode Settings solution but here's my current way to create an app:
You have to take your binary file (let say myapp) and put it in "MyApp.app/Contents/MacOS/myapp" then it can now be launched as a .app. That's a trick.
Just go to the targets folder in the file navigator on the left, and there will be an executable listed there. Left click on that executable and click "show in finder". (I'm describing from memory so I may have the exact details wrong.) The file path is ridiculously long (there is an arbitrary alphanumerical pathname involved, I have no idea why), so you probably won't be able to find it with the command line.
If you want you can change the extension of the file from nothing to ".app", it shouldn't affect the nature of the file at all. Also if you want a custom icon, you can "get info" on it in the finder, then click on the icon in the info window, and use Cmd-V to paste it in (obviously you have to have your icon copied to the clipboard). There is also a way to do this inside of Xcode, but I don't remember it.

How to specify a standard directory in a Qt project file

I have developed an application that I plan to deploy on Windows, Mac, and Linux. The program requires access to some files (scripts and the like) at run-time.
The installation process should install the files to a location that my application can later determine without user-intervention (or perhaps just a prompt allowing the user to change the location, if desired).
What is the best way to achieve this? I can't seem to find any way to:
1. Use a "standardized path" variable in the project file's INSTALLS statement. (e.g., my application could use QStandardPaths to initialize the location, but I can't figure out how to access this path from the INSTALLS statement)
2. Save the path to my project's QSettings (.plist, registry, whatever) for later retrieval
That leaves me with creating a custom project file and INSTALLS command for each environment, and then I still can't install to the user's directory because I don't know the user's name when I deploy the make command. It seems as if there must be a better way, but I can't seem to find any documentation for this. Am I just using the wrong keywords in my searches? Thanks in advance!
What standard directory? What type of getting that standard directory?
For instance, you can put such thing in your windows branch of .pro file:
win32 {
APPDATA_DIR = $$system(echo %APPDATA%) # should be %LOCALAPPDATA% as requested
message($$APPDATA_DIR)
}
Just unsure of what exact kind of standartized path you are talking about. QStandardPaths knows many. It makes sense to be more concrete to find the correspondence with concrete OS.
Also somewhat relative reply on mine, on how to check the correspondence with certain variable, etc: Qt .pro file - how to add conditioning on OSX version?
Maybe this class will help you
QStandardPaths documentation
But your problem is still little bit unclear for me.

I can't go to a directory with C++

I need to change working directory of my project, so that output files go to a certain folder, not where all the project files are.
I'm using
system("cd secretdir/");
system("ls");
However, what I get, is the list of files in current project directory, not the "secretdir" one.
I'm on Mac OS X 10.6/Qt Creator 4.7 64 bit
Thanks!
You have to change the current working directory
http://www.linuxquestions.org/questions/programming-9/how-to-change-current-working-directory-in-c-550031/
Also, you should consider saving your output files with full path names instead of changing the working directory.
Your current code will spawn a subshell that will change its current directory to ./secretdir, then proceed to exit() without doing anything else.
Only then will ls run in another subshell, whose current directory is, of course, completely independent of what you did during your previous call to system().
That's probably where your problem lies. Are you looking for the chdir() function?
chdir("secretdir");
// From now on, the current directory of the process is `./secretdir`.
system("ls"); // Will probably behave as expected.
edit See Falmarri's response as I glossed over the first sentence of your question.
You can also use chdir
the following is crufty
The first system spawns a new process that does the cd. The second system spawns a completely different process that doesn't know what happened previously.
One thing you could do is:
system("ls secretdir/");
I'd highly recommend checking out QDir, QFile, and QProcess objects in the QT Creator help or online documentation since you are using it. They have very detailed and easy to understand documentation and using the tools available to you in QT should be a primary reason for choosing that tool much of QT rivals boost in portability and usability in my limited experience.
Also there is a great community for QT related questions at QTForum worth bookmarking especially if QT Creator is your primary development environment.
Using system should be avoided as general rule of thumb it is inefficient and insecure in many cases.
EDIT: Sorry I too glossed over your first sentence and jumped to the code bits. You can modify the project settings via the Projects tab in QT Creator to add a Custom Process step to the build where you can specify a working directory and then do a copy command to wherever you would like your output to go. You also may be able to specify a build output option within your .pro file directly ... once again the help and documentation is your friend however.
The function on Mac OSX is chdir("./secretdir"), although since it's a POSIX API it actually works the same on many other platforms as well.
Using system() is not portable so try to avoid to use directly "cd" like that. My advice is to use Boost filesystem.
There is a Two-minutes Tutorial !
Do
system("cd secretdir/; ls");
Or better yet use boost's filesystem library. Maybe just opendir.

xcode's executable product for c++ project

I've completed a simple numbers-version of the game "Towers of Hanoi" using xcode's command line tool in C++. Being accustomed to PC compilers like borland's and visual-c, I've attempted to "share" the game with others via e-mail by simply attaching the executable product built by xcode. However, the recipients can't run the program as it shows up in a different format - usually machine code, it sounds like.
After a bit of extensive searching, I'm realizing the complexity of building projects within xcode's IDE and the variations on the build settings/ targets, etc.
Anyone know how to build a self-contained c++ executable to be universally run? I don't go outside the STL library for this game. I'd greatly appreciate any help.
thanks
OS X is based on Unix, which uses plain binary files (i.e. no filename extension) as executables. If they have a certain "executable permission," they can be double-clicked to be run as executables, or run from the command line. However, this permission can't be sent over email - it's metadata within the file system itself, and this makes sense from a security standpoint (you wouldn't want spammers sending you executable viruses over email right?). So when the recipient receives the binary, they'll need to run the following command line command on it, assuming "hanoi" is the name of the binary file:
chmod +x /path/to/hanoi
If you really want to package it as an instantly double-clickable application, you'll need to give it a native UI and package it as a .app, then put that .app (which is actually a folder with the .app extension) in an archive to distribute. Sorry if that's more work than you were hoping for. Hope this helps!
Sharing applications across dot releases of the same OS can be notoriously difficult on the Mac (at least, as far as personal experience goes).
In order to be able to share your application with the least amount of effort, you will need to figure out:
What project type is this? Are you using any resources like images etc?
What version of the OS your friends are using? If they are not on the Mac, you're out of luck (or you'll have to recompile for their OS-es).
If they run Mac, check out that you have the same OS versions, if you have developed on Leopard and someone's running on SnowLeopard your application might simply fail. (I also ran into issues between Mac OS 10.5.4 and 10.5.3 so keep your fingers crossed.)
Check out what sort of hardware you are running. Are you building for your hardware (say, MacIntel) only or are you creating an Universal Binary?
Make sure that all resources are packaged into your application bundle. Make sure your application uses only relative paths.
Check if you are not writing to special folders (i.e. use only temp and/or word-writable locations, if you need to).
I wish I could give a more detailed/to the point reply but unfortunately you'll have to figure out some of the answers yourself (without any other specific information about the error you are getting).
If you're satisfied with a command line tool rather than a double-clickable app, it should suffice to zip it and attach that to the e-mail. Be sure to build universal if anyone you're sending to might be using a PowerPC-based Mac. Oh, and set the deployment target to the minimum OS that any recipient might be using.