I am trying to save some money and develop a desktop application that would work on both Windows and a Mac OS. Is this possible? Can we do it in C++ and then, with a few fixes and tweaks, still reuse the same app on both OS?
Yes this is possible. Some code may differ as there are differences in the operating systems.
You should use a common library for GUI such as Qt: http://qt.nokia.com/
It is worth noting that Qt brings much more cross-platform features to the table, so familiarize yourself with it.
There will be some differences to handle such as
File paths (C: doesn't exist on Mac, \ and / are path separators, etc)
File endings differ (CrLf in Windows, Lf in Mac)
You need to compile to two different target CPU's. Most C++ compilers can do this.
The same code can be used for both, you just define regions to be (or not be) included depending on what OS the compiler is targeting.
Just Google a cross-os development guide, looooots of people has done this before. :)
It may not be relevant, but still worth noting (because you said "save money"), that both Java and the Mono Project (.Net, Qt) allows you to write cross platform applications with limited skills about the underlying platform. They are higher level language which in general are considered a time saver (but that is a separate discussion.)
Expanding on my comment:
Don't.
Write your library code in portable C++; putting as much as possible of the functionality in the library, making sure you study the platform-specific APIs (probably Cocoa and .NET) as you go, so the interfaces to the library are at least moderately suitable for either.
Then wrap your library in native binaries; ensuring that you pay attention to how applications are supposed to look on each platform, as well as the feel of them.
Building an application that looks like an X11 application and does everything in a manner somewhere between a Gnome application, a KDE application, an OS X application and a Windows application will really hurt user experience.
Badly.
WxWidgets
This question gets asked a lot, see also:
this question, this one and this one amongst others.
Coming in late to the party here!
I'm in the last stages of finishing a cross-platform, commercial application (OS/X and Windows for right now, conceivably Linux or iOS later).
We're using an open-source, cross-platform C++ development library called Juce, and I can't speak highly enough of it. It's extremely full-featured, the code is solid and high-quality, and you can apparently build for Windows, OS/X, Linux, iOS and Android from the same codebase (we've only tried the first two, but other developers are apparently reporting success for the other platforms).
What's particularly nice is that lead developer is very active on his bulletin boards and extremely responsive to trouble reports.
Also, you can license the library under GPL, and they also have a very reasonably priced commercial license.
Juce is very popular amongst people doing digital audio applications - indeed, to my best knowledge many or perhaps most of the top commercial digital audio apps use this system - but it's very full-featured and extremely fast and should be considered a top candidate for any cross-platform development application.
Related
Are there any platforms to build GUI platform without resorting to QT or .NET using native C++ ?
QT is cool, but take a lot of time to learn, in addition it has a lot of things I don't really need and really dislike QT IDE, compared to Visual Studio (I know you can use QT within Visual Studio)
.NET suffers same problem (I am actually learning C# and WPF right now, though it looks like WPF is somewhat easier to program and you can call native C++ code from WPF)
I am looking for something that is: relatively easy learn, does not have to have advanced features, works with C++11, support C++11 multi-threading, works with Visual Studio. Planning to build some applications for Numerical analysis.
There are lots of alternatives with varying levels of support in VS.
MFC has quite a bit of direct support in Visual Studio in the form of code generators, Wizards, etc. Unfortunately, the basic design is very old and hasn't aged very gracefully at all. Quite a few programmers not only would but do cite it as a prime example of a library that's better avoided if humanly possible.
WTL is Microsoft's other class library for producing Windows applications. It's a much newer design than MFC and generally considered much cleaner and nicer. As implied by the name, it's heavily template based, which helps it produce applications that are generally considerably smaller and faster than MFC ever attempted. For better or worse, Microsoft placed it under a fairly permissive open-source license some time ago, and updates since then have been quite minimal. Despite both being from Microsoft, Visual Studio has never done much to support WTL development.
wxWidgets started as more or less a clone of Microsoft's MFC, but has continued active development while MFC has mostly stagnated. It now has quite a few features (e.g., XML-based UI design, layout managers) far beyond anything MFC ever even considered including.
Ultimate++ is a fairly unusual toolkit that has mapped its own route (so to speak) that's quite a bit different from most others. They have their own IDE (TheIDE). Code can be quite simple and short, but is enough different from most typical C++ that many people find it difficult to grasp at first (and some experienced C++ programmers don't particularly like how some thing work).
GTK+/gtkmm is less of a Windows framework than a Linux framework that's portable enough to also work under Windows. It's probably not your best choice if you're developing exclusively (or even primarily) for Windows. These are also much more purely GUI frameworks than most others (i.e., they don't include things like collections, networking, cryptography, etc., that many others do include).
FLTK is another cross-platform toolkit. Its fairly small and fast, but somewhat like GTK+, it seems (at least to me) less like a Windows toolkit, than a Linux toolkit that happens to be portable enough that it can also work on Windows (but the results don't look or feel much like most Windows applications).
Juce was originally used to develop some music software (Traktion) so it includes a lot of music-oriented functionality. It also have some fairly unusual widgets that most others don't include (especially widgets that imitate controls you'd see on all sorts of audio equipment). Nonetheless, it has a solid core of basic GUI functionality, as well as the usual "extras" like network, crypto, XML and JSON, etc. Although I haven't tried to do anything like a full review of the code, it appears to be rather better written than most.
That's not a complete list by any means, but I think it hits most of the more popular/widely used GUI toolkits (other than Qt, of course).
Some time ago I asked myself exactly that same question.
I wrote my program using C++/CLI, which was not bad (my C++ code was very well isolated from the GUI/CLI part), but sharing the executable with others was a problem: it was the typical - it runs in my PC(...only). So, I needed a light alternative to the user unfriendly command line programs in scientific calculations, which I could easily share.
I am now happy to use Nana. Please join the group of users and / or developers of Nana and... have fun!
GUI with Nana C++ Library
Nana C++ Library takes aim at easy-to-use and portable library. It
provides a GUI framework and threads for easy programming with modern
C++ methods, such as traits, metaprogramming and other template
technologies.
Since you plan to develop exclusively for Windows, I think you should stay with MS provided GUI toolkits. While third party toolkits may provide the cross platform advantage you already said don't need, they add complication and dependencies.
Complication by for example when a new Visual Studio is released, then you have to wait for the toolkit to get that new VS supported, and dependencies, which means more dlls to be installed on the target system.
Plus some toolkits do not use the native look of the operating system, like many java programs for example.
Lately I've been contemplating whether I should start studying another framework since I only have a windows machine and I don't intend to make cross-platform software anytime soon. So to help me with that decision...
Is there any disadvantage to using a cross-platform framework when I don't intend to develop cross-platform? Intuitively I would say that a framework specialized for a certain platform would perform better in said platform than a cross-platform framework. But I am just assuming that.
Please enumerate frameworks and libraries that I can start studying for rapid application development on Windows using C++. One with lots of documentation is preferred. I would appreciate it if you included a link that can help me get started.
Is there any disadvantage to using a cross-platform framework when I don't intend to develop cross-platform?
It depends on the framework. Most frameworks limit themselves to functionality which is available across all platforms, which may limit you somewhat. You may also not be able to take advantage of the best features of a given platform or the best development environment on that platform.
Please enumerate frameworks and libraries that I can start studying for rapid application development on Windows using C++.
A good option here is Qt. It provides a very nice C++ based framework for Windows and other platforms. If you want Windows only, there are other options, including the Windows Runtime via C++ (for Windows 8 development), or the Microsoft Foundation Classes.
By using a cross-platform framework, you will miss out on platform-specific frills, like programmatic control over Windows 7 Jump Lists. Because of these things, it won't quite feel like a native application, but like a port of an application written for another OS. In many cases this doesn't matter.
A modern C++ framework built using templates isn't going to perform any worse simply because it's cross-platform. You'll simply miss out on features that don't exist on multiple platforms.
Generally the issue with cross platform frameworks are framework specific.
e.g. wxWidgets - They are fast, but not too many GUI classes available. Documentation is not excellent however updated properly.
GNome - It is widely used but requires a heavy runtime deployment, bit more heavy in terms of memory usage.
These both are UI Frameworks. both are GPL and hence you can use it.
Nokia Qt - It is an excellent cross platform framework and it is not just yet another UI but a complete framework for cross platform development. However, problem with Qt is metaobjectcompiler (mod). It is a kind of language extension.
I would recommend that you opt QT as your next framework. It is being actively developed, lightweight, recently being open sourced and is available under LGPL lic.
Just to second the other answers, Qt is a great framework (and is hopefully going to survive Nokia).
Cross platform frameworks have mainly two disadvantages: performance (often they add another layer that is not necessary in native platforms) and of course being cross-platform, i.e. often not supporting functinality that is specific to your target platform. With Qt, I never saw performance as a problem. Also Qt brings in so many libraries that actually extend what you can do natively in Windows, that also the second point is not really a disadvantage here.
The only problem with Qt is in fact the metaobjectcompiler (moc). In the beginning, you will stumble across some strange compiler errors, that come in the end from the moc. Just remember this and google for the errors, you will get used to this.
I am a software engineer and i work in VC++, C++ in WIndows OS.
Are there any major differences when it comes to coding in C++ in Linux environment.
Or is it just some adjustments that we have to make when we need to code in C++ in Linux.
It would depend on the types of projects you've worked on and what native windows APIs you made use of. For example if you used the native Windows API for everything, you're going to have a pretty big task ahead of you, it'd be worth making your project(s) work nicely with Wine instead.
In the Linux environment you have the man pages, quite detailed documentation of almost everything :). As mentioned above, look at POSIX, and while I recommend Qt - it provides a LOT of abstractions for things you might want to learn to do the Linux way (eg sockets, filesystem...)
Use the POSIX API instead of the Win32 API.
Use gtkmm, Qt, or wxWidgets instead of MFC.
Linux programming world is very different from you are familiar with in Windows world. You have to understand it and get used to it. Once you understand you will not want to come back.
You have many small/good tools that works with each other rather then all-in-one MSVC solution. For example:
In Linux you have a compiler as stand-alone tool (Gnu compiler collection), you have build system as stand-alone tool (autotools, CMake). You have GNU Debugger as stand alone tool and you have very good editors as stand alone tool (like hard core vim/emacs).
There are integrated development environments like Eclipse, Netbeans, KDevelop, Anjuta
but still you have to understand how stuff works.
You should understand that each separate tool is very powerful and integrates with others.
OS Level API is designed for simplicity. You'll rarely will find calls like CreateProcessEx with bizzilion parameters rather you have simple fork()+exec(). man is you real friend in all connected to system API and standard C library.
GUI - You have two big GUI libraries Qt/GTK. Qt is great C++ library that makes GUI development enjoyable work (unlike MFC). GTK has both C and C++ APIs GTK and GTKmm (no experience with them).
i18n/l10n/unicode - this is where Linux programming makes life easier. Almost everything is UTF-8. No wide API crap, no issues with opening Chinese file names with simple fopen or ifstream, no 3rd part library that can't open file with Unicode name. Great built in tools available like gettext, and good translation toolkits like KBabel.
Libraries - this is where Linux programming makes you hate Windows. Almost every single free library is already installed or available with simple apt-get or yum install. no debug/release incompatibility crap, no DLL_EXPORT-ing, simple robust, making shared objects is as simple as working with static libraries (and most do not use static libraries at all).
My $0.02
(I'm Linux programmer that have deal a lot with windows development)...
It depends on how many windows-specific things you've been using. The standard part of C++ is the same, but using that will not get you much further than command-line applications.
There's also the whole makefile-instead-of-letting-VS-build-for-you thing. Depending on what tool (or IDE) you decide to use in Linux, that could be a big difference.
I have worked quite a bit on both platforms and like them both, but in general I found most developers to like one and hate the other.
I would describe *nix environment as "geek friendly": many excellent and very flexible tools on your disposal. Some of them introduce hard learning curve, and some are simply broken but still popular for some reason (make) but if you are willing to invest some time in properly learning them, the reward is high. In fact, I use many *nix tools even when working on Windows: vim, grep, perl, etc...
On the other hand, Windows platform offers Win32 API which has way more functionality than POSIX, is very well documented and supported by very good tools. Debuggers on Windows (especially windbg) are generally more powerful that any *nix debugger I have tried, although gdb is generally good enough for most tasks. Deployment of executables is also easier than in Linux world - in fact the only truly reliable way to deploy software on Linux is to ship source code and build it on clients' machines via config/make.
I would suggest to use a Buildsystem like SCons which works very well on both Linux and Win32.
Take a look at the source to some open-source project that runs on both Linux and Windows. Typically, over 80% of the code is identical, and the bigger the project the less the system-specific part tends to be. Unfortunately, there can be hard parts (threading, non-blocking network IO, GUI details) in the system-specific code.
There are some major differences that I can think of:
Tools. Good and bad points. If you are used to Visual Studio, there is nothing quite like that available. Each Linux IDE has some issues. On the other hand, especially debugging tools are very good. But all in all, you are supposed to create your own working environment from what's available.
API's. Documentation varies wildly. Some components are well documented, but often you end up reading the source code to figure out how something is supposed to work. On the other hand, you have source code so eventually you have all the tools possible to figure out why something doesn't work.
The Linux programming community is usually very good as long as you remember to behave and you find the right places. SO isn't half bad in some issues, but sometimes you need to find other places.
Things are not quite as automatic as you might have learned in the Windows world. Yes, some tools allow you to create projects without Makefile knowledge, but really, you should learn how to use them. In Windows it's much more common that you never edit the project files (e.g. Makefiles) by hand.
If you want to work in kernel space (drivers etc) C is a better bet than C++ since the kernel is written with that.
And I agree with people suggesting Qt. Very nice widget set. Beats at least Swing (yes, I know, it's Java) hands down. And Qt Creator isn't half bad.
Don't underestimate the power of shell scripting! Something very few Windows programmers have figured out, but you can do a hell of a lot with them to help your work.
A typical windows programmer who is used to Visual C++ might find the following aspects of Linux C++ programming novel, or difficult:
Linux programming isn't linux programming, it's Unix programming. Unix programming's roots go back a lot further than the MS-DOS roots of Windows, and it shows in a lot of places.
Windows programmers tend to think about the environment, they tend to think about the IDE tools (your GUI editor, compiler, debugger) first. Unix programmers tend to be arranged in various tribes, many core Unix (linux) C++ programmers are very comfortable working from the command line without an IDE, and some, I'm sure, use visual-studio style IDEs on Linux, of which there are many.
I personally found I had to learn how to read (and maybe write) a makefile, build a bunch of standard Linux/Unix applications from source (and understand how to type my way through steps like 'autoconfiguration' and the various "--command-line-options" one might select there), before I get the feel, and the flavour of the environment.
Until you are a seasoned Linux system administrator you might want to stick with the newbie-friendly Linux distributions (like Ubuntu).
I have been writing C++ Console/CMD-line applications for about a year now and would like to get into windows GUI apps. For those of you who have taken this road before, what advice/tips can you give me. Ex: good readings, tutorials, approach tactics, etc...
I know this is a really broad question, but i really don't know how/where to start, thus not knowing how to ask this question properly.
I highly recommend the use of the Qt Libraries for several reasons:
The Framework is freely available for Windows, Linux, MacOS X, and a couple of mobile systems. Since version 4.5 the license is LGPL, which basically means that you can use Qt even in commercial applications.
The design of Qt is out-standing, e.g. they use modern design patterns and a very consistent interface design (I don't know many other libraries that use object-oriented ideas in such perfection). Using Qt is the same as using Boost: it will improve your own programming skills, because they use such beautiful concepts!
They are bloody fast, for instance in rendering (due to the different back-end for OpenGL, DirectX, etc.). Just have a look on this video and you see what can easily be done with Qt but is hard to achieve with native Windows, Mac, or Linux programming.
They have a really great documentation, with tons of tutorials and a very good reference. You can start learning Qt easily with the given docs! The documentation is also available online, so have a look and see by yourself.
As mentioned before, Qt is cross-platform; you have one source-base that works on all the important operating systems. Why will you limit yourself to Windows, when you can also have Mac and Linux "for free"?
Qt is so much more than "just" the user interface; they also offer network and database functionality, OpenGL bindings, a full-working web-browser control (based on WebKit), a multimedia playback library, and much much much more.
Honestly, I wasted a couple of years by developing software natively for Windows, while I could have been so much more productive.
For C++ you have two choices, Native or Managed.
For native development, my team (at Microsoft, in Windows) uses the Windows Template Library. It works very well for us.
You should learn the basics of Win32 and how Windowing works. The canonical tome is Programming Windows®
For Managed development you can use C++ with Windows Forms. However, windows forms has been supplanted by Windows Presentation Foundation (WPF).
Here is a good site that can get you up to speed.
This tutorial is useful
You can use Visual C++ 2008 Express Edition for your tools (they are free).
My best advice for Windows C++ GUI programming is don't do Windows C++ GUI programming.
I realize that is an extremely uninformative/smartass response if it's not qualified, so I'll note that you don't state that you need to do C++ Windows GUI programming, but that you "Would like to get into Windows GUI apps." If that is the case, and you don't have a very specific reason to use C++ (i.e. gigantic existing legacy codebase written in MFC or a bunch of C++ code that you want to build a front-end for but would be a pain to expose to .NET code), then it is going to be a lot easier and more productive to go the .NET route and start learning Windows Forms or better yet WPF using C# or another .NET language of your choice.
If you do need to go C++, then I would second the recommendations for 3rd party toolkits like Qt or wxWidgets, as the state of C/C++ GUI programming tools from Microsoft is now abysmal.
Most windowing libraries and technologies use similar idioms. Pick one and learn it.
The Windows Template Library is a very nice veneer for Microsoft Windows while sticking with C++.
For cross platform C++ windowing toolkits (they work on Microsoft Windows as well as other platforms) you can try QT or wxWidgets.
Well, for the Windows GUI, get used to referencing the MSDN a lot, assuming you want to deal with the API directly.
My favorite resource for learning the basics was theForger's tutorial, but there are hundreds of books and other sites out there.
I guess an important place to start is your toolkit. You tagged this visualc++, so I assume you are looking at that, however remember there are other toolkits like Qt.
I would suggest starting at Microsoft's tutorials.
+1 for Qt. I would put documentation at the top of my list of requirements for a GUI system. Qt has great docs and there's a huge community behind it. Also there are several books about it. Good docs are extremely important if you are working alone with no other team members to rely on. Alternatives are wxWidgets, MFC, WTL, FLTK and many more. They all have pros and cons. Eg FLTK is small and only provides GUI whereas Qt and wxWidgets also include networking, database access etc. Qt seems to have the most momentum at the moment after the Nokia buyout eg the release of Qt Creator which enables you to develop apps outside of Visual Studio.
It has been so long since I worked with C++ on Windows GUI, my word is always avoid C++ in Windows GUI unless you have a very good reason, I mean a good darn reason, if you need some performance C# is more than enough for 90% of the cases, and if you need more power write your performance critical thing in a C++ dll, and call it from a Windows Forms or WPF application.
It will save you hell of a lot time.
Still my opinion, if you have another I totally respect that
The first question is that do you want to develop Free, Open Source, for personal use or Commercial applications in C++?
If you want to develop for personal use! Then you can go with some good C++ Toolkit, Framework or API.
If you want to develop an GUI application that will be open source or free. Then you can go with C++ Toolkits, Frameworks or API's that have the GPL or any open source license that fits your needs.
Even you can develop Commercial applications with open source toolkits, frameworks or API's that have LGPL license.
The second question is that do you want to develop for the Windows, Mac, Unix or Linux? or these all, even for the mobile platform?
If you have a Windows user, as I am, and want to develop only for the Windows, I mean not for the cross platform, you can go with Win32 API, although, learning Win32 API is harder but it gives you the complete control over the machine. Believe me that no other tool would you provide the complete control over the machine. If you dislike Win32 API, for any reason, you can go with MFC, which is another technology from Microsoft, but is not free, old and has less attention now a days. If you decide to develop with .NET platform, you have C++/CLI, an extension to C++ language for developing .NET applications. .NET gives you the type safety, OOP and a built in garbage collector, provides you the all API's related to Windows and x86 or x64 machine in one package.
.NET has its own world! Microsoft has decided to port .NET to other operating systems too, Mono project is an example... You can develop nearly all kinds of applications using .NET.
If you want to develop C++ GUI applications for the cross platform, then Qt, WxWidgets and U++ are available for your help. You can write once and deploy anywhere with these libraries. Many open source IDE's and compliers are also available to develop C++ applications with ease. Note that if you do not want to develop for the cross platform, any cross platform library would be overhead and unavoidable increase in size of the executables.
Is your C++ knowledge is good enough to program software systems?
In fact, if your knowledge of C++ is not enough deep and you do not understand programming methods like OOP, Encupsolation, Classes, Interfaces, Types, Programming Patterns and so on, you can not use any toolkit with full potencial.
Do not forget that every Toolkit, Framework or API is implemented in some programming language. If you do understand the language very well, you can use the toolkit very well. I think, you would understand my point.
Put aside WPF or VC++ or Qt, You can also try out several libraries such as :
OpenFrameworks
Processing
...
there's an active project for developing Gui with Openframeworks here:
http://www.syedrezaali.com/blog/?p=2172
Are you familiar with Microsoft Visual Studio and .NET technologies? Since you want to develop for Windows platforms why don't you start by taking a look at Microsoft Visual C++ Express Edition.? Explore a little with the available tools from MS and search for some tutorials.
We are in 2020 but the question is still pertinent. I agree with Qt users, it's a great framework.
However, there is also C++Builder that offers you design GUI visually at design-time. C++Builder application can be built on both VCL (Windows only) and FireMonkey (cross-platorm) frameworks. Clang compiler can produce both 32 and 64-bits native executables. Community edition of C++Builder is free. Delphi integration is seamless: C++Builder project can include Delphi files directly and use any existing Delphi component packages and libraries.
On my side job as programmer, I am to write a program in C++ to convert audio files from/to various formats. Probably, this will involve building a simple GUI.
Will it be a great effort to build seperate GUIs for Mac and Windows using Cocoa and WinForms instead of a cross-platform toolkit like Qt or GTK? (I will have to maintain a seperate Windows-version and Mac-Version anyway)
The GUI will probably be very simple and only need very basic functionality.
I always felt that native GUIs feel far more intuitive than its cross-platform brethren...
If you have the expertise, use native frontends, it'll effectively double the job you have to do for UI but from my experience non-native UI is a little bit clunkier than their native counterparts.
Have you looked at wxWidgets? Cross platform native controls.
I would agree that if possible, native front-ends are the way to go. I've not used wxWidgets recently, and I've heard it's come a long way, but back when it was wxWindows, we built an app with it that was spec'd to be built in X/Motif. When we finished the effort and delivered it, the customer said it did not look enough like X/Motif, and we had to re-work the entire UI at our expense... Joel Spolsky wrote a good article on this, but I can't remember the title. What he did say, IIRC, was the problem with Java and some other cross-platform UI was that "your dog barks at my app" - it's the little inconsistencies that annoy folks.
Cross-platform toolkits, more or less, all make the incorrect assumption that the difference between platforms is a matter of button placement and widget styling. In some cases you can get away with this - a Qt app will feel fairly native on both Windows (where UI conventions are very lax) and on Linux, particularly a KDE environment. In general, you can move between Linux and Windows relatively easily; conventions are similar, and the Windows community is lax about them.
Mac is the hard one. Its UI is built around an entirely different paradigm than either Windows or most Linux environments.
But in general, in a native app it's easier to speak the native language of the platform in more ways than just widget style.
Yes.
But seriously, it depends on your goals. I agree that the native UI libraries, with a bunch of effort put into them, will give vastly better results, but for lots of apps, a very basic UI is sufficient and a lot less effort if you take one of the existing cross platform frameworks.
Maybe starting with the CLI and getting functionality working makes the most sense for an audio conversion application.
I'm going to write my own cross platform application GUI layer for this soon.
Depending on the complexity of your application this can be a fraction of what is required for QT, GTK or FOX.
Reason is that we see a tendency that the platform vendors (Apple first) tries to design there system so that it looks unique. This makes it much harder for QT, GTK, FOX and other platform tools to constantly keep in sync with the latest widgets.
When the underlaying technique becomes more and more the same the OS vendors have no option then branding on look and feel of the platform.
wxWidgets used standard c++ syntax and preprocessor thus make you easily alter from plain C or C++. And will produce very native look where is appear, be it on GTK, X11, MS-Windows or Mac.
It's mature since 20yrs of 1rst release, has complete documentation with easy navigating, and supported by large community arround the world.
Coding in your favorite IDE or use prominent Eclipse-IDE and wxFormBuilder as GUI designer. Build wx library and IDE/Toolchain setup could be found on this link: http://yasriady.blogspot.co.id/2016/01/raspberry-pi-toolchain.html
Develop your application in Linux desktop and also provided compiler for Raspberry Pi2 (target application tested work smootly on Raspbian Jessie) ............