I am using Qt 4.6.3 with MinGW on Windows to build Qt apps and now need to add a COM interface to my application. I enabled ActiveQt but was getting post-link errors because I was missing a copy of the MIDL compiler. I downloaded a copy of the latest MS Windows SDK, which includes MIDL, but now MIDL complains it cannot find cl.exe. The only conclusion I can draw is that you can only build ActiveQt applications using the MS compiler, which I would rather avoid. Is a way to get this working with MinGW or am I out of luck?
Using the MS compiler and tools seems to be the only reliable way to get this working.
Well, you can build ActiveQt with MinGW, but using a bunch of COM stuff on top of that may not be possible, because it may or may not be present in MinGW. Some thoughts:
Using any MS SDK tools with MinGW won't work (exception is mingw.org + DXSDK which should work most of the time).
Are you sure you are linking all necessary libraries when compiling? I can't help more if you don't show the exact error messages.
The mingw-w32/w64 project tries to provide a completer "Windows SDK for GCC"; it may contain the libraries/files you are looking for. They provide a x64 and x86 compiler, and pretty good DX support. I have no experience with their COM stuff, but I believe it would be a bit more complete than mingw.org's. You can always contact the developers on the forums or mailing list, they are very helpful.
You could try the Wine implementation of midl, widl. See the Wine wiki page regarding building on Windows.
If you want to give it a quick run, get wine-prgs-0.9.14-mingw.zip and see how it works.
I agree with Rob's second post: it's a very bad thing using mingw for construction of ActiveX objects. Mingw has some bugs regarding ActiveX: https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=203299 and also: https://qt.gitorious.org/qt/qt/merge_requests/2710. I kill the whole day to discover it. Use Qt for MSVS instead and all will be ok. ;)
I've solved this problem next way:
Got QtCreator, Msys2 and VS2015 Community installed.
Launching Qt Creator with batch script:
#echo off
call "C:\Program Files (x86)\Microsoft Visual Studio 14.0\VC\vcvarsall.bat" x86 8.1
setlocal
set MSYSTEM=MINGW32
set MSYS2_PATH_TYPE=inherit
start "" "C:\msys64\usr\bin\mintty" -i /msys2.ico -e /usr/bin/bash --login -c "/c/Qt/Tools/QtCreator/bin/qtcreator.exe"
exit /b 0
I am launching QtCreator out of Msys2 envioronment because it provides standart Unix tools needed to build 3rd party in my project.
So in theory this is not mandatory to have Msys2 for you.
Please note: do not use WinSDK 10.0 (or above) because it does not have midl.exe in PATH variable.
Doing this way will create PATH environment variable with Qt Creator on top priority (so you will use gcc from Qt installation), Msys2 next (so you can use standard Unix tools) and MSVC and WinSDK 8.1 at last place (so while building you will find midl compiler).
Right now I succeed building dll and passed it to midl form WinSDK, but as for now I am stil trying to register it in system.
I did actually succeed in creating and invoking in-process and out-of-process servers using QT+mingw-w64 today, so here is a write-up.
This was based on the instructions at https://doc.qt.io/qt-5/activeqt-server.html , although they were written for the Windows-native build of QT and using MSVC, so some changes were needed .
Tools installed
MSYS2 updated to latest version (as of 29 Oct 2020).
qtcreator and mingw64/mingw-w64 (64-bit target), installed via MSYS2.
Package mingw64/mingw-w64-x86_64-qt5-static installed (this causes the "Qt5 Static" kits in qtcreator to be enabled).
Visual Studio 2019 Community edition (this provides midl.exe).
https://github.com/lucasg/Dependencies - lucasg Dependencies walker. (Not essential but good for checking your static build worked).
Creating the COM DLL (without a type library yet)
These steps assume prior familiarity with QtCreator+qmake for "normal" executables.
Copy the example project from qtactiveqt/examples/activeqt/simple . I actually couldn't find this anywhere in the MSYS2 installation of QT so I cloned the QT source directly and picked out the example.
In the Kit Management in QtCreator, I selected the qt5-static 64-bit kit. This is to avoid any issues due to DLLs not being found at runtime.
This example is an out-of-process server, so to change to in-process, add to the simple.pro file the lines: TEMPLATE=lib and CONFIG += dll.
Enable static linking in GCC as I describe in this answer: https://stackoverflow.com/a/64583309/1505939
Build the project . This will give a warning that it couldn't read simple_res.o but that can be ignored. This should successfully create the output file simpleax.dll, but then there are some error messages to do with widl not found -- which we will address in the next section.
Writing the type library to the DLL
Other Windows tools (e.g. regsvr32, and any other client who wants to use the DLL) expects to be able to read the type library out of the DLL.
The DLL which was created in the previous steps does not contain a type library. I think this is because none of our toolchain tools know how to create a type library. Instead, we have to use midl.exe supplied with VS Community to generate the type library.
In QtCreator there is a post-build script that's supposed to invoke midl . However that doesn't work in the MSYS2 flavour of QtCreator. It seems it was only written for the native flavour using MSVC as the kit.
So we have to manually do the post-processing, which involves:
In the MSYS2 shell, go to the directory of simpleax.dll.
Run this command: idc simpleax.dll -idl simpleax.idl -version 1.0
Start the "x64 Native Tools Command Prompt" start menu item that came with the VS Community installation.
Navigate to the directory of simpleax.dll
Run the command: midl simpleax.idl /nologo /tlb simpleax.tlb. (Note - just adding midl to the MSYS2 path doesn't work as it can't then find a bunch of other dependencies).
Back in the MSYS2 shell, go idc simpleax.dll -tlb simpleax.tlb.
Note that you only need to do all this if the type library changes (i.e. you make a change to the class definition of your exported COM objects). If just rebuilding the project then only the last step would be needed, which you probably can add as a manual build step in the QtCreator config.
Registration and run test
Congratulations! You should now be able to open an elevated command prompt and run regsvr32 simpleax.dll and have it succeed. (If it doesn't work, run dependencies -chain simpleax.tlb and then at the end it will list any DLL dependencies).
After registration succeeded, I was able to invoke the COM object using VS Community (New C++ Console project, and #import "D:\path\to\simpleax.dll", build, and then it creates a .tlh C++ header file that contains wrappers for the DLL).
Cleaning up the type library
The type library that was created contains a whole bunch of annoying QT guff. I discovered that if you want to create a COM object that's not an ActiveX control, you can use QObject instead of QWidget as the base class. Then you don't get most of the guff that is to do with GUI elements.
Also, taking out the Q_CLASSINFO("EventsID",... line from the COM object's class definition means you don't get all the source/sink guff in the type library (for some reason it decides it has to put all the QT event sinking stuff in there).
After doing that, there is only about one screenful of guff left, including the definition of QPoint and so on, that I would consider to be a bug on the part of QT (since the stuff is not needed). I found I could just remove that from the .idl file prior to invoking midl, and hey presto we have a clean interface that can be published.
The out-of-process server
This also worked for me, identical to the above steps but without step 3 (i.e. leave it as app instead of lib). The procedure for attaching the type library via midl is the same.
Registering the type library via testobject.exe -regserver gives no message to tell you if it succeeded or failed, so another way is to use idc -regserver testobject.exe from elevated MSYS2 prompt, then it will give you a failure message.
I was able to invoke the object via VS Community just the same as for the in-process server.
Further issues still to work out
Figure out how to do this in CMake.
Automate the post-build type library procedure.
Get non-static linking working.
Automate removal of the type library guff (or report a bug)
Related
There's a great article here that describes how to use native C++ libraries in Xamarin/C#, and I would assume that this would extend to MAUI: https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/xamarin/cross-platform/cpp/
I followed these instructions, and put together an end-to-end demo solution of it here: https://github.com/whodges/bindingsample. This does require that you link Visual Studio to a MacBook to build the full solution.
That example essentially uses the default MAUI template, and modifies it slightly so that the actual 'click counter' value is set and retrieved from a native library on a per-platform basis. For Windows, that's a C++ DLL (works great). For Android, that's a .so library (works great). And for iOS, that's a static .a library, and here's where I'm running into trouble: when I try to launch this app using the iOS Simulator, it fails with a clang++ error, and something along the lines of "Could not extract the native library 'libCounteriOS.a' from .../obj/Debug/net6.0-ios/iossimulator-x64/linker-cache/libCounteriOS.a'. Please ensure the native library was properly embedded in the managed assembly (if the assembly was built using a binding project, the native library must be included in the project, and its Build Action must be 'ObjcBindingNativeLibrary')".
I created a C# .NET iOS Binding Library project (Counter.iOS in my example), and this is supposed to bundle libCounteriOS.a, which is generated when CounteriOS (a C++ project) is compiled. First, when Counter.iOS is built using Visual Studio on Windows, it fails to generate the Counter.resources folder in its 'bin' folder, along with the subsequent 'manifest' file. When I use Visual Studio for Mac, these files do get generated. So, I stuck with Visual Studio for Mac to build the iOS.Counter project (everything else is built with Visual Studio on Windows).
Regardless, I still get the "could not extract the native library" error I described. I've tried setting the library file's Build Action in Counter.iOS to ObjcBindingNativeLibrary, but that just results in an unhelpful "Build failed - see build log for details" error in Visual Studio for Mac, and I cannot find said log file for the life of me. On top of that, it's not an Objective C library anyway - it's a C++ one - so I'm not sure if this step is actually appropriate. Does it have to be Objective C? The Xamarin article suggests otherwise, and the native reference option 'Is C++' is there as well. I've also tried setting libCounteriOS.a's Build Action to 'BundleResource' - no luck with that either. I've tried it with .NET 7.0 as well - also no luck there.
I'm really at a loss. Is this even possible? It doesn't seem to work and I've been poking at it for weeks on it. That Xamarin article seems to suggest it should be possible. Any help would be greatly appreciated.
The wxWidgets hello world example does not provide sufficient information to build wxWidgets in any one particular environment.
The Code::Blocks wxWidgets hello world example does provide sufficient information, but it does not seem likely that a newbie, or even a quite sophisticated user, could figure out all the necessary steps on their own, because there are arcane magic words required.
The Code Yarns example uses CMake, thus could run in many particular environments, but seems to assume that you have already set up wxWidgets and compiled it for your particular environment, and there does not seem to be a CMakeLists.txt file to compile wxWidgets for your particular environment.
wxWidgets is supposed to be cross platform and cross environment, and I am trying to set up a project to compile in several environments: on Windows10 Visual Studio, Windows 10 TDM-GCC, Windows 10 Code::Blocks, Ubuntu Code::Blocks, and Ubuntu 10 gcc.
And apart from the Code::Blocks environments, having trouble. Apart from Code::Blocks, I cannot find "Hello World" examples that actually set up wxWidgets on the target so that the Hello World will actually compile and run.
The wxWidgets samples directory is not particularly useful, since the samples assume an environment, and do not describe setting up that environment and the actions that will cause the sample to build and run.
Installation guide
I know this is a old question but I struggled really hard to find a guide for an installation on wxwidgets. You can use the vckpg importer by Microsoft. Make sure you have git installed before you follow this routine. I will write this for Windows with Visual Studio 2017:
Clone the following repository to a directory of your choice:
git clone https://www.github.com/Microsoft/vcpkg
Then open up powershell (ps) (run it as admin) and navigate to the cloned vcpkg folder
Now in ps, while you are in the vcpkg folder run the following command \.vcpkg integrate install so we have a user-wide integration of the vcpkg paket manager and can #include libraries in our c++ projects
Now to install wxwidgets 32-Bit run \.vcpkg install wxwidgets --triplet x86-windows. For the 64-Bit Version run \.vcpkg install wxwidgets --triplet x64-windows
Now open up the properties of your project in Visual Studio.
For the integration of the 64-Bit wxwidgets version choose all configurations and as plattform x64. Then go to C/C++ -> General -> Additional Include Directories and add the following folderpath YOUR_FOLDER_PATH\vcpkg\packages\wxwidgets_x64-windows\include;YOUR_FOLDER_PATH\vcpkg\packages\wxwidgets_x64-windows\lib. Do the same for the x86 configuration but with the wxwidgets_x86-windows folderpath instead.
As a last step go to in the properties under C/C++ -> Preprocessor and under the point Preprocessordefinition add the following as extra point WXUSINGDLL=1 (do it for the x64 and for the x86 plattform configuration if you want to use both)
Now you should be able to use the library and run the hello world project.
To build an app, first you need to have the library compiled. To achieve that you can get precompiled binaries or the sources (see Downloads) and compile them yourself (see Building).
Instructions might still not be perfect for everyone, and you are welcome to improve them - even call it your first contribution ;)
The installation instructions that I was looking for are to be found in wxWidgets/docs/install.txt
There are multiple ways to setup wxWidgets on Windows and use it in a project.
If your project is going to use CMake there are 2 main options (other than compiling stuff yourself some other way):
Use vcpkg - which, in theory, is the easiest, but I couldn't get it to work (in time). Here is some info on that: https://www.wxwidgets.org/blog/2019/01/wxwidgets-and-vcpkg/
The problem is find_package couldn't find the package, so then I just went to 2:
Download the lastest compiled headers, libs & bins from the wxwidgets and put them in a folder like c:/wxwidgets. Then, in your Cmake file, before the call to find_package, do:
SET(wxWidgets_ROOT_DIR "c:/wxwidgets/")
SET(wxWidgets_LIB_DIR "c:/wxwidgets/lib/vc14x_x64_dll")
SET(wxWidgets_CONFIGURATION "mswd")
The LIB_DIR is using VS2019 x64 in my case.
mswd just means build this for Debug
Finally, when adding the executable, do not forget the WIn32:
add_executable(membot WIN32 ${project_SRCS})
P.S.: Remember to extract the headers include folder near the lib.
I have installed Qt-5.7 on windows 8 because I couldn't build my released .exe from Linux (my favorite) in order to be used on Windows OS even after searching a lot on internet (Where there have to be cross-compilation...). After the installation, I just want to make sure that I can build/run a first application (one of the examples provided by default by Qt-creator "filesystembrows") and I have follow the official guide in order to build Qt as shared libraries, but the issue is that when I type the first command line I get: 'nmake' is not recognized as an internal or external command' Also it still show the same message even though a update the variable environment of the system with C:\Qt\Qt5.7.0\5.7\mingw53_32\bin which one is the default path set-up when installing Qt on windows. Any help just to make a stand alone .exe for Windows (as shared libraries ) please
Why not build your project by using qtcreator ?
Did you test your build environnement by making a test application with qtcreator ?
P.S.: If you want, I can explain how to build application using Visual Studio as a compiler and QtCreator as an IDE.
nmake is a build tool provided with Visual Studio and with Windows SDK. You don't have it, apparently.
It seems you're using a mingw build of Qt; it comes with a bundled copy of mingw. There, the build tool is simply called make.
I created application which uses wxWidgets library using visual studio 2008. Now I would like to create version which may be run on other machine.
Because right now when I want to run It on another machine there is an error:
the application failed to start because its side-by-side configuration is incorrect.
What can I do to make It work ?
The Event Viewer should have a record showing what DLL was being searched for, what version of that DLL if found in the SxS cache, and what version it was looking for but couldn't find. You'll then want to (for example) include the correct version of that DLL to be installed with your program. Alternatively, just link to virtually everything statically -- it'll make your executable a lot bigger, but eliminate a lot of problems like this relatively painlessly.
I installed XP on a virtual machine, updated it to SP3 and then tested a small program compiled with Visual C++ 2008 on my real computer - however it didn't start but outputted only an error saying that a problem had been detected and that a reinstall of the application (mine is 10KB in size and doesn't even have an installation) could fix the problem.
What is required to run programs compiled with MSVC 9?
Can I just include some dlls for it to work everywhere?
Either link statially against the runtime library (select multithreaded instead of multithreaded-dll) or follow tommieb75's advice and install the MSVC9 runtime redistributable (copying to system32 or to the application's folder works as well, but is not the way to go, afaik). For small applications with no need for an installer, I'd prefer the first option. Deploying runtime installers is annoying.
You could be missing the MCVC9 runtime library, try copying that over to the Windows System32 folder...
It may depend against which DLLs your project is linked. Inspect the assemblies manifest and check if those DLLs are installed on your VM.
What does your program contains? Dependencies on dynamic C/C++ runtime? Then you need to either include the C++ redistributable runtime DLLs in your app, or change the program to use the static C++ runtime. Similarly, do you use ATL? MFC? Custom 3rd party libraries? They all add dependencies to your executable and Win32 will refuse to load your application.
One easy step is to check with Dependency Walker what dependencies your application has.
It could be a dll you application links against. The depends tool is a must have in every programmers toolbox for debugging dll dependency issues.
If you have the commercial rather than express msvc edition, what you really should do is copy the msvcmon redist components to your VM, run the remote debug monitor there, and attach to it from your desktop dev environment. This page explains the basic principal. Because it sounds like your app is causing an exception on XP.
If you can't remote debug and if dependency checker does not indicate a dll issue, then you could look in the systems application event log to see if there is any more information there. Or try install Dr Watson as a post mortem debugger. Open a command prompt and enter
drwtsn32 -i
to install Dr Watson as the post mortem debugger, and
drwtsn32
to get a config screen allowing you to browse for the location of crash dumps. You can load crash dump files directly with Dev Studio 2005 and later. (I don't think Dr Watson ships with Vista and Windows 7 anymore).