I have built a windows C++ application that I'd like to port to linux. The main reasons to do this is ease of system maintenance for our IT staff. Apart from the one windows machine that runs this application we're a linux only operation.
The reason this application was built in-, and runs on- windows is that it uses a windows API (dll and header) to connect to a server belonging to an external party. This connection uses some proprietary protocol that I don't really want to mess with, (and I think I'm contractually not allowed to) so I'm stuck with the .dll.
This dll is windows only because of (I suspect) windows sockets specific code in the dll. Apart from that it doesn't do a whole lot of advanced stuff. Is there a way somewhere between just running the app on linux in WINE and sniffing out the protocol and reimplementing the DLL myself that will allow me to get this application to run on a linux machine?
This idea got inspired by this item about QT creator so any solution that allows me to play with that would be extra cool.
The most obvious middle ground would be to use Winelib. I do not know if it can link directly to a native DLL, but if not you probably could load it with LoadLibrary().
You could then split your application in two parts: a wrapper which only calls the DLL, and the rest of the code talking to your wrapper. You could have both in separate processes, and thus only the wrapper would have to be compiled with Winelib. The rest of the application could then use whatever framework you want.
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Currently I'm working on a simple game engine project. I would like it to be independent from the platform, so for started I've taken only classical Windows Desktop application and Metro Style app.
From this picture:
Windows APIs
We can see that the C/C++ blocks are common for both parts. In other words, I would like to easily switch between platform configurations. I've created simple WinAPI static library that you can easily include in the project, as well as DirectX game-engine and it works perfectly. However, I'm having issues to do the same with WinRT (used in Metro Style apps).
Is it possible to have one Visual Studio project that can use WinAPI or WinRT? It would be perfect if I could have like one single entry point for a game and just switch underlying APIs.
No. A single VS project that either generates a classic win32 exe and a WinRT (nowadays Universal) applications is not possible.
In theory they could have made it possible, like you can have a single project that generates a console application or gui application. The difference between the two boils down to one (or two) flags.
The difference between a classic exe and a WinRT app is quite big: There are manifests and packaging and special sauce signing not to mention the resources (icons, etc) are specified differently.
In the Visual studio UI this is manifested by a different set of property pages, besides the common core of compiler + linker ones of course.
The other reason is one of strategy. Microsoft wants you to move forward and embrace the WinRT API. That is the API set that works across all Windows devices (if you ignore the Win7 elephant in the room). Supporting a dual mode will send the wrong signal to developers.
As a side note that the very windows headers (windows.h) are annotated by API family. CreateNamedPipe is #ifdef out in a WinRT application, or for example there is CreateFile for classic apps and CreateFile2 for modern apps.
We want to try to launch our software on Chrome OS using ARC. Many parts of our software application are written in C++ and compiled using the Android NDK.
Is it possible to launch this kind of application under ARC?
Is it possible to launch Native applications(or Java + JNI) under ARC?
Yes, ARM compiled NDK libraries will run on all Chromebooks currently. For ARM machines they run more or less natively.
For non-ARM machines there is a binary translation layer that dynamically converts the code to run on the target machine. This layer may not be 100% machine compatible and if you see errors or crashes indicating instructions cannot be translated, or fundamental differences between your app on ARM and x86, you should file a bug: http://goo.gl/megdlG
I am currently using a library in my project called PDFtron. It contains ".so" files that I have to assume are either c or c++, and they work fine with Java + JNI. There doesn't seems to be a lot of information out there about how this all works(and what works or doesn't), so please post your findings.
From google spokesperson(taken from arstechnica):
"""The app code is all running on top of the Chrome platform, specifically inside of Native Client. In this way the ARC (App Runtime for Chrome) apps run in the same environment as other apps you can download from the Chrome Web Store, even though they are written on top of standard Android APIs. The developers do not need to port or modify their code, though they often choose to improve it to work well with the Chromebook form factor (keyboard, touchpad, optional touchscreen, etc)."""
In this quote I think the important part is the integration with native client, which is a technology for executing Native code like C and C++ in the browser.
I have an executable I made using a CLI console application with Visual Basic 2010. I can run the program completely fine from my developer machine.
However, when I copy the executable over to another machine, re-boot to a pre-installation environment and run the executable again, nothing happens at all. There are no errors shown or anything.
My guess is the executable can't run without certain dependencies that aren't loaded at this environment, but I need it to work in a PE.
Any ideas on whats going on?
First of all, since the question is tagged "c++" and you mention C++/CLI several times, I assume that "Visual Basic 2010" is a typo for "Visual Studio 2010". But either way, whether you've written the application in Visual Basic (VB.NET) or C++/CLI, the problem is exactly the same.
My guess is the executable can't run without certain dependencies that aren't loaded at this environment, but I need it to work in a PE.
That's exactly correct. You've written an application that targets the .NET Framework. Somewhat like Java applications requiring a JVM, .NET applications require that the .NET Framework be installed in order to run (or a compatible alternative implementation, like Mono). Unfortunately, Windows PE does not support the .NET Framework.
Note that it is irrelevant whether you've written a WinForms, WPF, or Console application. Although they present their UI in very different ways, they all depend on the .NET Framework being installed.
You will need to (re-)write the application in a different programming language, one that generates native code without any dependencies on the .NET Framework. C and C++ are popular choices. If you choose to use C++, make sure that you create what Visual Studio calls a "Win32" project. This is one that targets the underlying operating system APIs directly (i.e. a native application) and does not have a dependency on the .NET Framework. Stay away from anything that has ".NET" or "CLR" in its description.
I don't really have a full comprehension of when an application is using .NET or not... I am just used to Linux C/C++ development. I hate Microsoft shit
It uses .NET whenever you use the .NET Framework libraries/classes in your code. I'm not really sure why this is so difficult to understand. The same problem could easily exist on Linux if you were using a third-party library that was not available in certain environments for whatever reason. This is not Microsoft's problem, it's an issue of using the wrong tools for the job. The .NET Framework is an object-oriented wrapper around the native APIs that makes it much easier for people to get up and running writing programs for Windows. But if you're "used to Linux C/C++ development", you should have little trouble writing a simple console application that targets the native APIs directly without using .NET.
If your hatred for "Microsoft shit" has turned into an allergy, you can avoid Visual Studio entirely and download MinGW, which is a Windows port of the GCC compiler you're probably used to. Combined with your favorite Windows port of Vi, you're working in an environment very similar to the one you're used to. And since GCC doesn't support C++/CLI or the .NET Framework, you won't have to worry about getting stuck picking the wrong option.
The .Net framework has been supported as an optional package install during your PE build process for the past couple versions of WinPE. I write code in C# that I run in WinPE everyday. I have yet to find a good way to debug in a manner where I can walk through break points, etc... though. My best option has just been a lot of logging and a global Exception catch around my main entry point that will write out a full stack dump. You can attach to your app as a remote process in a VM running WinPE, but if you need to catch something early in the execution you'll have a difficult time.
I have been using Qt (uses c++ code + Qt libraries) on the windows platform and am in the process of porting my project onto the Linux platform.
Using Qt this has been a very simple process and my project works on the Linux platform with barely any changes required.
However, we need to use a 3rd party windows compiled .lib with an associated header file. Clearly this file cannot work under Linux, but I have been reading posts that suggest I could use Wine to do this.
So in general my project will work as a normal Linux (Ubuntu) project, but I would like to include this .lib file using Wine. I have not been able to find a definitive answer "how to do this". I am not sure if you use Wine to translate the .lib into a .so file or if you have to statically link it in with some "Wine-like" convention...
Can anyone help point me in the right direction?
Thanks :)
AFAIK, you can't make hybrid applications with Wine (i.e. link C++ Linux executable with some Linux static libraries and Windows static libraries).
One of the solution I suggest is to encapsulate you Windows library in a Windows program that act as some network service, then you make your Linux application talk to your Windows library through the network.
However, it adds complexity to your software, requires you know how to do some network programing (however, these days it is quite easy to do) and is not suitable to every kind of library, especially if your library has some kind of GUI.
Have you tried compiling under Windows and running the entire program under Wine?
I'm not sure you can splice Wine and Linux programs.
I cannot imagine that a hybrid approach would work. In any case, running part of your program as a native application and the other part inside WINE will not give you much advantage over the complete program running in WINE. In either case, WINE is needed.
The main disadvantage of running the complete program in WINE is the look and feel of the GUI which might look a little alien to the system. However, using a proper setup for WINE will minimize the problem. And as a side note, most Linux users are used to different GUI concepts due to the different desktop environments available. Personally I have a lot of GNOME applications running in my KDE desktop.
I would personally try running your program in WINE. It makes development much easier. A circuit simulation tool that is quite famous with electrical engineers uses this approach. It is called LTSpice. While only Windows binaries are available, the developers test it with WINE to ensure that it runs on Linux. Admitted, it is a tool offered for free but the community accepts this approach.
Currently we have a legacy client/server system written in MFC(server) and Java(client). This system cant not run on Internet because of various reason. So, we are developing a small system (very few functionalities of this legacy system) in cake php etc to fullfill customer requirement.
Now, one functionality in legacy system needs in this new system. We are thinking of making a DLL of that code and then integrate it with cake php (to save time) but this DLL will not work on Linux where this new system will sit.
So, is there any way to generate a dll so that it works with php in Linux system using QT etc?
OR
we have to rewrite the whole thing? In this case, what would be the most appropriate framework to develop cross platform dll. I would prefer to use Windows to write it.
Also, can we run dll with cake php?
Thanks
So, is there any way to generate a dll so that it works with php in Linux system using QT etc?
No, Linux doesn't support the DLL file format. You may want to compile a shared object file in the ELF format from your source code.
I think, the two most prominent cross platform GUI libraries are wxWidgets and Qt.
You cannot use a Windows DLL as a part of a Linux application. That is simply not possible, because of the different object formats.
So, the only option is to rewrite or port it in some form.
A guide for porting your application might be Porting MFC applications to Linux, which uses wxWidgets.
Another one using Qt, could be MFC to Qt Migration - Walkthrough.