Compile winapi with cygwin - c

Question

I have tried compiling a windows executable using the win32api, however I have encountered many road blocks.
First thing to try was gcc -mno-cygwin [...] which results in gcc: error: unrecognized command line option '-mno-cygwin' which is strange since man gcc|grep -e '-mno-cygwin' is successful and mingw is installed.
No matter what other header files I try to include I always end up with unsatisfied circular include dependencies (a.h requires b.h requires a.h). What set of header files are required to properly compile an executable based on the win32 api?
header files I have tried:
w32api/winnt.h
w32api/ddk/ntddk.h
w32api/Windows.h
w32api/ntdef.h
source code:
$ cat source.c
#include <w32api/winnt.h>
#include <w32api/ddk/ntddk.h>
int main(int argc, char **argv) {
PHANDLE hProcess;
CLIENT_ID processId;
processId.UniqueProcess = (HANDLE) 1000;
processId.UniqueThread = 0;
NtOpenProcess(&hProcess, PROCESS_VM_READ|PROCESS_VM_WRITE, 0, &processId);
return 0;
}
$ gcc -o a.exe -I/usr/include/w32api -I/usr/include/w32api/ddk source.c
In file included from memoryEdit.c:1:0:
/usr/include/w32api/winnt.h:291:11: error: unknown type name 'CONST'
typedef CONST WCHAR *LPCWCH,*PCWCH;
^
[...]
$ gcc --version
gcc (GCC) 5.4.0
$ uname -a
CYGWIN_NT-6.1 HOST_NAME 2.5.2(0.297/5/3) 2016-06-23 14:29 x86_64 Cygwin

Answer 1

gcc -mno-cygwin has been removed ages ago.
If you want to compile a windows program you need to use not the gcc compiler, that is cygwin to cygwin, but the cross compilers cygwin to windows.
There are 2 package variants depending on the arch:
mingw64-i686-gcc
mingw64-x86_64-gcc

Answer 2

I had no troubles just now with a compilation in Eclipse/gcc. Here's my testfile:
/*
============================================================================
Name : win32gcctest.c
Author : Clark Thomborson
Version : 1.0
Copyright : Copyleft
Description : Testing winapi synchronous file access within Cygwin
============================================================================
*/
#include <stdio.h>
#include <windows.h>
#include <stdlib.h>
#include <fileapi.h>
void my_write(char* fname) {
HANDLE hFile;
char DataBuffer[] = "This is some test data to write to the file.";
DWORD dwBytesToWrite = (DWORD) strlen(DataBuffer);
DWORD dwBytesWritten = 0;
BOOL bErrorFlag = FALSE;
hFile = CreateFile(fname, // name of the write
GENERIC_WRITE, // open for writing
0, // do not share
NULL, // default security
CREATE_ALWAYS, // overwrite any existing file
FILE_ATTRIBUTE_NORMAL, // normal file
NULL); // no attr. template
if (hFile == INVALID_HANDLE_VALUE) {
DWORD last_err = GetLastError();
printf("Error code %d: unable to open file \"%s\" for write.\n", last_err, fname);
exit( last_err );
}
printf("Writing %d bytes to %s.\n", dwBytesToWrite, fname);
bErrorFlag = WriteFile(hFile,
DataBuffer, // start of data to write
dwBytesToWrite, // number of bytes to write
&dwBytesWritten, // number of bytes that were written
NULL); // no overlapped structure
if (FALSE == bErrorFlag) {
DWORD last_err = GetLastError();
printf("Error code %d: unable to write to file \"%s\".\n", last_err, fname);
exit( GetLastError() );
exit( last_err );
} else {
if (dwBytesWritten != dwBytesToWrite) {
// This is an error because a synchronous write that results in
// success (WriteFile returns TRUE) should write all data as
// requested. This would not necessarily be the case for
// asynchronous writes.
printf("Error: dwBytesWritten != dwBytesToWrite\n" );
exit( EXIT_FAILURE );
} else {
printf("Wrote %d bytes to %s successfully.\n", dwBytesWritten, fname);
}
}
CloseHandle(hFile);
}
HANDLE my_open_for_read(char* fname) {
HANDLE hFile;
hFile = CreateFile(
fname,
GENERIC_READ,
FILE_SHARE_DELETE, // another process may delete this file while this handle is open
NULL, // no security attributes
OPEN_EXISTING, // returns error if file not found
FILE_ATTRIBUTE_NORMAL, // no special attributes, so can't do async IO
NULL // no attributes will be copied from another file
);
if (hFile == INVALID_HANDLE_VALUE) {
DWORD last_err = GetLastError();
printf("Error code %d: unable to open file \"%s\" for read.\n", last_err, fname);
exit( last_err );
}
return hFile;
}
ssize_t my_read(HANDLE hFile, void *buffer, size_t bytes_to_read) {
DWORD bytes_read;
if (ReadFile(hFile, buffer, bytes_to_read, &bytes_read, NULL)) {
return (ssize_t) bytes_read;
} else {
DWORD last_err = GetLastError();
printf("Error code %d: unable to read file.\n", last_err );
exit( last_err );
}
}
int main(void) {
char fname[32] = "test.txt";
my_write( fname );
printf("Reading %s.\n", fname);
char buff[1024];
HANDLE hFile = my_open_for_read( fname );
ssize_t nc = my_read( hFile, buff, 1023 ); // allow room for terminating byte
if( nc >= 0 ) {
buff[nc] = 0; // terminate string
printf("Read %d characters: %s", (int) nc, buff);
return EXIT_SUCCESS;
} else { // buggy my_read()
printf("Error %d", (int) nc );
return nc;
}
}