Create a Static Library on Windows Which Is macOS and Linux Compatible - c

I would like to generate a Static Library file in Windows using MSVC / IXX which is macOS and Linux compatible.
I'm using C (Let's say C99) and the functions are really simple. For example:
void AddArray(float* mA, float* mB, float* mC, int numElements){
int ii;
for(ii = 0; ii < numElements; ii++){
mC[ii] = mA[ii] + mB[ii];
}
}
Is there a way to build the Library only once on Windows and use it everywhere?
If not on windows, could it be done on Linux and work on Windows and macOS?
The idea is compile once with the same compiler and not use MinGW on Linux for instance.

This is not possible in the simple way you want (one library file for each OS/compiler) due to the fact that static libraries are compiled binary code, which inevitably reference platform specifics and must (in general) be in a compiler specific format. Some level of compatibility exists between several compilers on the same OS, but never ever is that going to work across different OSes. Mac OS used to have the concept of fat binaries (in which both the 32-bit and 64-bit binary code resided next to each other), but since they moved to exclusively 64-bit, this isn't really relevant anymore (although they still exist and still can be used).
If you want to distribute in binary form, you will need to provide different binaries for each platform (OS/architecture/toolchain) combination you want to support.

Related

OpenCL 1.2 compiling kernel binary using LLVM

Say I have the OpenCL kernel,
/* Header to make Clang compatible with OpenCL */
/* Test kernel */
__kernel void test(long K, const global float *A, global float *b)
{
for (long i=0; i<K; i++)
for (long j=0; j<K; j++)
b[i] = 1.5f * A[K * i + j];
}
I'm trying to figure out how to compile this to a binary which can be loaded into OpenCL using the clCreateProgramWithBinary command.
I'm on a Mac (Intel GPU), and thus I'm limited to OpenCL 1.2. I've tried a number of different variations on the command,
clang -cc1 -triple spir test.cl -O3 -emit-llvm-bc -o test.bc -cl-std=cl1.2
but the binary always fails when I try to build the program. I'm at my wits' end with this, it's all so confusing and poorly documented.
The performance of the above test function can, in regular C, be significantly improved by applying the standard LLVM compiler optimization flag -O3. My understanding is that this optimization flag some how takes advantage of the contiguous memory access pattern of the inner loop to improve performance. I'd be more than happy to listen to anyone who wants to fill in the details on this.
I'm also wondering how I can first convert to SPIR code, and then convert that to a buildable binary. Eventually I would like to find a way to apply the -O3 compiler optimizations to my kernel, even if I have to manually modify the SPIR (as diffiult as that will be).
I've also gotten the SPIRV-LLVM-Translator tool working (as far as I can tell), and ran,
./llvm-spirv test.bc -o test.spv
and this binary fails to load at the clCreateProgramWithBinary step, I can't even get to the build step.
Possibly SPIRV doesn't work with OpenCL 1.2, and I have to use clCreateProgramWithIL, which unfortunately doesn't exist for OpenCL 1.2. It's difficult to say for sure why it doesn't work.
Please see my previous question here for some more context on this problem.
I don't believe there's any standardised bitcode file format that's available across implementations, at least at the OpenCL 1.x level.
As you're talking specifically about macOS, have you investigated Apple's openclc compiler? This is also what Xcode invokes when you compile a .cl file as part of a target. The compiler is located in /System/Library/Frameworks/OpenCL.framework/Libraries/openclc; it does have comprehensive --help output but that's not a great source for examples on how to use it.
Instead, I recommend you try the OpenCL-in-Xcode tutorial, and inspect the build commands it ends up running:
https://developer.apple.com/library/archive/documentation/Performance/Conceptual/OpenCL_MacProgGuide/XCodeHelloWorld/XCodeHelloWorld.html
You'll find it produces bitcode files (.bc) for 4 "architectures": i386, x86_64, "gpu_64", and "gpu_32". It also auto-generates some C code which loads this code by calling gclBuildProgramBinaryAPPLE().
I don't know if you can untangle it further than that but you certainly can ship bitcode which is GPU-independent using this compiler.
I should point out that OpenCL is deprecated on macOS, so if that's the only platform you're targeting, you really should go for Metal Compute instead. It has much better tooling and will be actively supported for longer. For cross-platform projects it might still make sense to use OpenCL even on macOS, although for shipping kernel binaries instead of source, it's likely you'll have to use platform-specific code for loading those anyway.

Where do i get BIOS.h file, to import in Mingw?

Mingw don't have BIOS.h file by default. And i'm doing system programming by using netbeans IDE and a third party tool mingw. . ?
Can any one helps me, where do i get that file?
This is the code.
#include<stdio.h>
#include<BIOS.H>
#include<DOS.H>
char st[80] ={"Hello World$"};
void main()
{
_DX = (unsigned int) st;
_AH = 0x09;
geninterrupt(0x21);
}
Nowhere, you don't.
Those header files (dos.h and bios.h) are from 16-bit DOS compilers such as Turbo C or Open Watcom C. MinGW is a 32-bit compiler for Windows. As such, even if you get these header files, they will be useless because:
they are incompatible with gcc
they also need counterpart libraries because the headers themselves do not contain definitions of things like geninterrupt()
DOS interrupt services (int 21h) are not available to Win32 programs
Further, gcc does not support variables aliasing to CPU registers (e.g. _DX, _AH).
You either need to use the appropriate 16-bit DOS compiler or write a Windows program using functionality available from gcc and Win32 API.
Do you really need it? It's been obsoleted a hundred or so times. But from what I've heard, some older Turbo C versions might have it. You can also try out http://www.sandroid.org/TurboC/ , but they say the file might not have all the functions.

Is executable file generated after compiling in C can be copied and run on any differnet OS(UNIX)?

I am a java programmer, but i have few things to be done in C. So, i started with a simple example as below. If i have compiled it and generate a executable file (hello), can i run the executable file (hello) in any unix platform without the original file (hello.c)? And also is there a way to read the data from executable file means, decompile the executable file to original file (hello.c)?
[oracle#oracleapps test]$ cat hello.c
#include <stdio.h>
int main(){
int i,data =0;
for(i=1;i<=64;i+=1){
data = i*2;
printf("data=%d\n",data);
}
return 0;
}
To compile
gcc -Wall -W -Werror hello.c -o hello
You can run the resulting executable on platforms that are ABI-compatible with the one which you have compiled the executable for. ABI-compatibility basically means that the same physical processor architecture and OS-interfaces (plus calling convention) is used on two (possibly different) OSes. For example, you can run binaries compiled for Linux on a FreeBSD system (with the same processor type), because FreeBSD includes Linux ABI-compatibility. However, it may not be possible to run a binary on all other types of Unices, unless some hackery is done. For example, you can't run Mac OS X applications on linux, however this guy has a solution with which it's possible to use some OS X command line tools (including the GCC compiler itself) on Linux.
Reverse engineering: there are indeed decompilers which aim to generate C code from machine code, but they're not (yet) very powerful. The reason for this is they're by nature extremely hard to write. Machine code patterns have to be recognized, and even then you can't gather all the original info. For example, types of loops, comments and non-static local variable names and most of the types are all gone during the compilation process. For example, if you have a C source file like this:
int main(int argc, char **argv)
{
int i;
for (i = 0; i < 10; i++)
{
printf("I is: %d\n", i); /* Write the value of I */
}
return 0;
}
a C decompiler may be able to reconstruct the following code:
int main(int _var1, void *_var2)
{
int _var3 = 0;
while (_var3 < 10)
{
printf("I is: %d\n", _var3);
_var3 = _var3 + 1;
}
return 0;
}
But this would be a rather advanced decompiler, such as this one.
You can't run the executable on any platform.
You can run the executable on other machines (or this one) without the .c file. If it is the same OS / Distro running on the same hardware.
You can use a de-compiler to disassembler to read the file and view it as assembly or C-- they won't look much like the original c file.
The compiled file is pure machine code (plus some metadata), so it is self-sufficient in that it does not require the source files to be present. The downside? Machine code is both OS and platform-specific. By platform, we usually mean just roughly the CPU's instruction set, i.e. "x86" or "PowerPC", but some code compiled with certain compiler flags may require specific instruction set extensions. The OS dependence is caused not only by different formats for executable files (e.g. ELF as opposed to PE), but also by use of OS-specific services, or common OS services in an OS-specific manner (e.g. system calls). In addition to that, almost all nontrivial code depends on some libraries (a C runtime library at least), so you probably won't be able to run an executable without having the right libraries in compatible versions. So no your executable likely won't run on a 10 year old proprietary UNIX, and may not run on different Linux distributions (though with your program there's a good chance it does, because it likely only depends on glibc).
While machine code can be easily disassembled, the result is very low-level and useless to many people. Decompilation to C is almost always much harder, though there are attempts. The algorithms can be recovered, simply because they have to be encoded in the machine code somehow. Assuming you didn't compile for debugging, it will never recover comments, formatting, variable names, etc. so even a "perfect" decompiler would yield a different C file from the one you put in.
No ... each platform may have a different executable format requirements, different hardware architectures, different executable memory layouts determined by the linker, etc. A compiled executable is "native" to it's currently compiled platform, not other platforms. You can cross-compile for another architecture on your current machine though.
For instance, even though they may have many similarities, a compiled executable on Linux x86 is not guaranteed to run under BSD, depending on it's flavor (i.e., you could probably run it under FreeBSD but typically not OSX's Darwin version of BSD even thought both machines may have the same underlying hardware architecture). You also couldn't compile something on a SGI MIPS machine running IRIX and run it on a Sun SPARC running Solaris.
With C programs, the program is tied to the environment it was compiled for (which is usually the same as the platform it was compiled on, unless you are cross-compiling). You could copy something built for one version of Linux (and a particular hardware architecture) to another machine with the same archtecture running the same version of Linux, and you'll be fine. You can often get away with running it on a related version of Linux. But you won't get x86/64 code to run on a IA32 machine, nor on a PPC machine, nor on a SPARCmachine. You can likely get IA32 code to run on an x86/64 machine, if the basic O/S is sufficiently similar. And you may or may not be able to get something compiled for Debian to run under RedHat or vice versa; it depends on which libraries your program uses.
Java avoids this by having a platform-neutral byte code program that is compiled, and a platform specific JVM (JRE) to run it on each platform. This WORM (Write Once, Run Many) behaviour was a key selling point for Java.
Yes, you can run it on any unix qemu runs on. This is pretty comparable to java programs, which you can run on any unix the jvm runs on...

Atomic Operations in C on Linux

I am trying to port some code I wrote from Mac OS X to Linux and am struggling to find a suitable replacement for the OSX only OSAtomic.h. I found the gcc __sync* family, but I am not sure it will be compatible with the older compiler/kernel I have. I need the code to run on GCC v4.1.2 and kernel 2.6.18.
The particular operations I need are:
Increment
Decrement
Compare and Swap
What is weird is that running locate stdatomic.h on the linux machine finds the header file (in a c++ directory), whereas running the same command on my OSX machine (gcc v4.6.3) returns nothing. What do I have to install to get the stdatomic library, and will it work with gcc v 4.1.2?
As a side note, I can't use any third party libraries.
Well, nothing is there to stop you from using OSAtomic operations on other platforms. The sources for OSAtomic operations for ARM, x86 and PPC are a part of Apple's libc which is opensource. Just make sure you are not using OSSpinLock as that is specific to Mac OS X, but this can be easily replaced by Linux futexes.
See these:
http://opensource.apple.com/source/Libc/Libc-594.1.4/i386/sys/OSAtomic.s
http://opensource.apple.com/source/Libc/Libc-594.1.4/ppc/sys/OSAtomic.s
http://opensource.apple.com/source/Libc/Libc-594.1.4/arm/sys/OSAtomic.s
Alternatively, you can use the sync_* family, which I believe should work on most platforms, which I believe are described here: http://gcc.gnu.org/wiki/Atomic
The OpenPA project provides a portable library of atomic operations under an MIT-style license. This is one I have used before and it is pretty straightforward. The code for your operations would look like
#include "opa_primitives.h"
OPA_int_t my_atomic_int = OPA_INT_T_INITIALIZER(0);
/* increment */
OPA_incr_int(&my_atomic_int);
/* decrement */
OPA_decr_int(&my_atomic_int);
/* compare and swap */
old = OPA_cas_int(&my_atomic_int, expected, new);
It also contains fine-grained memory barriers (i.e. read, write, and read/write) instead of just a full memory fence.
The main header file has a comment showing the operations that are available in the library.
GCC atomic intrinsics have been available since GCC 4.0.1.
There is nothing stopping you building GCC 4.7 or Clang with GCC 4.1.2 and then getting all the newer features such as C11 atomics.
There are many locations you can find BSD licensed assembler implementations of atomics as a last resort.

Delphi dcu to obj

Is there a way to convert a Delphi .dcu file to an .obj file so that it can be linked using a compiler like GCC? I've not used Delphi for a couple of years but would like to use if for a project again if this is possible.
Delphi can output .obj files, but they are in a 32-bit variant of Intel OMF. GCC, on the other hand, works with ELF (Linux, most Unixes), COFF (on Windows) or Mach-O (Mac).
But that alone is not enough. It's hard to write much code without using the runtime library, and the implementation of the runtime library will be dependent on low-level details of the compiler and linker architecture, for things like correct order of initialization.
Moreover, there's more to compatibility than just the object file format; code on Linux, in particular, needs to be position-independent, which means it can't use absolute values to reference global symbols, but rather must index all its global data from a register or relative to the instruction pointer, so that the code can be relocated in memory without rewriting references.
DCU files are a serialization of the Delphi symbol tables and code generated for each proc, and are thus highly dependent on the implementation details of the compiler, which changes from one version to the next.
All this is to say that it's unlikely that you'd be able to get much Delphi (dcc32) code linking into a GNU environment, unless you restricted yourself to the absolute minimum of non-managed data types (no strings, no interfaces) and procedural code (no classes, no initialization section, no data that needs initialization, etc.)
(answer to various FPC remarks, but I need more room)
For a good understanding, you have to know that a delphi .dcu translates to two differernt FPC files, .ppu file with the mentioned symtable stuff, which includes non linkable code like inline functions and generic definitions and a .o which is mingw compatible (COFF) on Windows. Cygwin is mingw compatible too on linking level (but runtime is different and scary). Anyway, mingw32/64 is our reference gcc on Windows.
The PPU has a similar version problem as Delphi's DCU, probably for the same reasons. The ppu format is different nearly every major release. (so 2.0, 2.2, 2.4), and changes typically 2-3 times an year in the trunk
So while FPC on Windows uses own assemblers and linkers, the .o's it generates are still compatible with mingw32 In general FPC's output is very gcc compatible, and it is often possible to link in gcc static libs directly, allowing e.g. mysql and postgres linklibs to be linked into apps with a suitable license. (like e.g. GPL) On 64-bit they should be compatible too, but this is probably less tested than win32.
The textmode IDE even links in the entire GDB debugger in library form. GDB is one of the main reasons for gcc compatibility on Windows.
While Barry's points about the runtime in general hold for FPC too, it might be slightly easier to work around this. It might only require calling certain functions to initialize the FPC rtl from your startup code, and similarly for the finalize. Compile a minimal FPC program with -al and see the resulting assembler (in the .s file, most notably initializeunits and finalizeunits) Moreover the RTL is more flexible and probably more easily cut down to a minimum.
Of course as soon as you also require exceptions to work across gcc<->fpc bounderies you are out of luck. FPC does not use SEH, or any scheme compatible with anything else ATM. (contrary to Delphi, which uses SEH, which at least in theory should give you an advantage there, Barry?) OTOH, gcc might use its own libunwind instead of SEH.
Note that the default calling convention of FPC on x86 is Delphi compatible register, so you might need to insert proper cdecl (which should be gcc compatible) modifiers, or even can set it for entire units at a time using {$calling cdecl}
On *nix this is bog standard (e.g. apache modules), I don't know many people that do this on win32 though.
About compatibility; FPC can compile packages like Indy, Teechart, Zeos, ICS, Synapse, VST
and reams more with little or no mods. The dialect levels of released versions are a mix of D7 and up, with the focus on D7. The dialect level is slowly creeping to D2006 level in trunk versions. (with for in, class abstract etc)
Yes. Have a look at the Project Options dialog box:
(High-Res)
As far as I am aware, Delphi only supports the OMF object file format. You may want to try an object format converter such as Agner Fog's.
Since the DCU format is proprietary and has a tendency of changing from one version of Delphi to the next, there's probably no reliable way to convert a DCU to an OBJ. Your best bet is to build them in OBJ format in the first place, as per Andreas's answer.

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