How can I cross compile my GTK+ app (written in C) from Linux to Windows? Could I just replace the "gcc" command with "mingw32"?
Fedora has a great mingw32 cross-compiler toolchain which comes with lots of precompiled libraries, including GTK+ and gtkmm. For most applications you just need to install the cross-compiler and the cross-compiled GTK+ libraries:
yum install mingw32-gcc mingw32-gtk2
Once everything needed is installed, compiling your application is just the matter of running "mingw32-configure" followed with "make".
More information at the project page https://fedoraproject.org/wiki/MinGW
You can use mingw-cross-env - all you have to do then is to change your CC/CXX environment path to use the i686-mingw32- prefix and export the mingw-cross-env bin dirs (both) to your PATH variable (or if you are using autotool it's even easier) - see the documentation on the homepage.
There is actually a project called MXE that does exactly this.
Pre-build package
You can download my pre-build binaries if you want.
Build from source
You can also build the code from scratch ideally also applying this PR to update to the latest GTK 3.24 version.
MXE has a easy wrapper (x86_64-w64-mingw32.static-cmake) to cross-build your project towards Windows, while using Linux. Allowing to evenly statically build your project into a single .exe file! Of course shared builds (x86_64-w64-mingw32.shared-cmake) are also supported. The example wrapper scripts are meant for CMake based projects.
Before you can build your project with MXE, you need to build the GTK3 from source-code. (There are some Linux packages available, but mostly out-dated). If you are using C++, you can also build gtkmm3. Since you are in place C, you only need to build gtk3.
git clone https://github.com/mxe/mxe.git
Become root user: su
mv mxe /opt/mxe
cd /opt/mxe
Build the MXE project yourself:
For static builds under Windows 64-bit for GTK3 & Gtkmm3:
sudo make gtk3 gtkmm3 -j 16 MXE_TARGETS='x86_64-w64-mingw32.static' MXE_PLUGIN_DIRS='plugins/gcc12'
For shared build to Windows 64-bit (again GTK3 + Gtkmm3):
sudo make gtk3 gtkmm3 -j 16 MXE_TARGETS='x86_64-w64-mingw32.shared' MXE_PLUGIN_DIRS='plugins/gcc12'
More info see the tutorial steps on MXE.cc.
Once you done the cross-compile environment / MXE build. Now you can use the CMake wrapper scripts I mentioned earlier. Those scripts are located in the /opt/mxe/usr/bin/ directory.
The scripts (like x86_64-w64-mingw32.static-cmake) can now be used to compile your project towards Windows, while using the Linux operating system. The build result would be an Windows .exe.
Disclaimer: I personally created this PR for MXE to update GTK to the latest 3.24.x release.
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I'm new to programming C in Linux. I like to make GUIs with GTKlibs. The only problem is that im unable - and not only with gtk - to install these packages correctly. I have problem to include the librarys like #include<gtk/gtk.h> if I have installed it with sudo apt-get install gtklib-3-dev.
On compile time it sais everytime that the file is missing and so on. I have read the option to put dpkg configs and cflags to the compiler, but that doesn`t work either. How linux is managing the include folder and why do libs like gtk have an upperfolder with the version on it like gtk3 etc.. This is the problem that leads to missing files.
The exact package name depends on your Linux distribution. If you're using Ubuntu, then the right command is:
sudo apt-get install libgtk-3-dev
You may then check if the development packages are detected with something like:
pkg-config --exists gtk+-3.0 && echo "Installed" || echo "Not installed"
To learn how to build your application, follow the instructions of the official documentation on How to compile GTK+ applications.
Finally, instead of doing the gcc calls manualy, you can automate them by using a build system like the Meson build system. There's a tutorial on how to build a simple GTK+ application with Meson.
Please note: Although I'm specifically talking about the Eclipse CDT plugin, I'm almost 100% confident that any Windows/C/MinGW programmer can answer this question.
I'm on Windows 7 and am trying to write and compile a simple "Hello, C!" C application using Eclipse's CDT plugin. I'm reading their docs which state that having GCC installed is a prerequisite.
I just installed MinGW, making sure to include the following packages:
mingw-developer-toolkit
mingw32-base
mingw32-gcc-g++
msys-base
Back in the CDT docs (under the section titled Windows configuration), it states that I need to add g++, make and GDB to my PATH.
I'm wondering where MinGW installs these utilities, so that I can add them to my system PATH, and make the Eclipse CDT recognize their location at startup.
When using the Eclipse CDT plugin, you need GCC and its 3 specific utilities installed locally. These three utilities are: g++, make and gdb.
On Windows you can choose to install these utilities via Cygwin or MinGW. For a MinGW-based solution, go to their site and download the MinGW Package Manager. Then open the manager and install the following packages:
mingw-developer-toolkit
mingw32-base
mingw32-gcc-g++
msys-base
Then go to File >> Apply Updates and apply them. This will install the 3 utilities to the following directories on your machine:
C:\MinGW\bin\g++
C:\MinGW\bin\gdb
C:\MinGW\msys\1.0\make
Add these 3 binaries to your system PATH, restart Eclipse and you are all set.
I downloaded the X264 source and installed mingw.
Step 1:
Executed this in the MINGW bash:
./configure --disable-cli --enable-shared --enable-win32thread -
-extra-ldflags=-Wl,--output-def=libx264.def
and then 'make'
Step 2:
Renamed the libx264-142.dll to libx264.dll and Opened up VS2012 Command Prompt and executed this:
LIB /DEF:libx264.def
which gave me libx264.lib and object libx264.exp
Step 3:
Included the lib file in a VS2012 project which uses the X264 API.
Problem:
When I start the project I get the following error message:
"The program can't start because libx264.dll is missing from your computer"
Question:
Why is it looking for the dll when I'm linking the static library in?
How do I resolve this? I would like to build a static X264 library which I can link in with my project.
EDIT:
I just had to put the dll in the same directory as the project executable.
However - My question still stands: How do I build a static x264 library? So I don't need the dll?
After the latest update of x264 you can build static library usable by MSVS project. For such library compilation you will need:
MSYS and MSVS 2013 Update 2 (express version [for Windows Desktop] would also work if you install Update 2)
run "VS2013 x86 Native Tools Command Prompt" or "VS2013 x64 Native Tools Command Prompt" depending what version (32 or 64-bit) you want to build
change dir to x264 path and run MSYS shell (sh)
from shell run "CC=cl ./configure --disable-cli --enable-static" for x264 configuring
run "make" which should build libx264.lib usable from MSVS
P.S. MSVS builds would be a little bit slower than one build by MinGW
Matthew Oliver has a GIT repository of a patched x264 source tree (https://github.com/ShiftMediaProject/x264) that compiles natively in VS2013 update 2 and later. It requires installing a YASM version for VS.
It worked pretty much straight out of the box for me, though I did have to change the VSYASM parameter "-f Win32" to "-f win32" for a 32bit build
Take a look here: http://siliconandlithium.blogspot.no/2014/03/building-x264-on-windows-with-visual.html
Static lib is not possible in windows as per my knowledge.
I start to learn c and c++ programming and I write it in Linux.
Can I make binary file with g++ and run it as exe in window 7? or i need to compile the code in windows again?
You can use a mingw cross compiler to build windows binaries in linux. In Ubuntu (and I guess other Debian variants as well) the package is called mingw32. You then have a cross compiler under the name i586-mingw32msvc-g++ (or similar). For building simple command line programs without library dependencies this is an OK solution.
If you need more then this I'd recommend you use MXE (M cross environment). MXE installs its own cross compiler and can build many libraries for you so you don't need to care about how to build the library dependencies.
For example the OpenSCAD project (a 3D CAD program that is using Qt for its GUI) is using MXE for building the Windows releases. See this page on the OpenSCAD wiki for a description of the build process.
I am a begineer trying to get code in C. I am working on a Mac and using xcode. My only past experience has been with java using eclipse and everything was pretty straight forward. I have almost no experience with terminal.
I am required to learn a bit of C for a project I will be working on and the learning of syntax is coming along okay, but I am at a point where I need to include some libraries in my c program. Specifically I am attempting to make plots with gnuplots.
I have downloaded gnuplot-4.6.3 from their repository and I do not even know how to install the files. I have been looking around and have tried using terminal to use the ./configure command when I am in the gnuplot-4.6.3 directory. But I really don't know what I am doing so I don't even know where to go next or what to do next.
Sorry if this is so trivial, I honestly just have never done this before and I cannot find a good tutorial on what to do.
Thanks for any help you can offer.
I would recommend using MacPorts for installing third-party tools and libraries. It knows the dependencies required and will install them as part of the installation.
Download it from macports.org.
Install it, and allow it to modify your ~/.profile so that /opt/local/bin is in your $PATH (any issue then just do export PATH=/opt/local/bin:$PATH from the command line).
sudo port selfupdate
sudo port install gnuplot
Now that will install the library into /opt/local/lib with the include files in /opt/local/include, so now just add that library to your Xcode project. Select the target and in the Build Phases tab open up the Link Binary With Libraries and press the + button and select Add Other. Now find /opt/local/lib/libgnuplot.a (I am assuming that's what it's called; I don't have it installed my self):
Now add /opt/local/include to your Header Search Paths so the compiler can find the gnuplot header files. Select the target and in Build Setting type in "header search" in the search box. Now double-click on the Header Search Path in the target column (or the project column to the right) and add /opt/local/include:
It's fine! You're learning then! Keep up! When I hit this kind of problem you may want to learn about the basis for linux gcc/g++ compilation and linking processes. Then you should learn Cmake and Automake, which are basically packages to configure projects before compiling building.
A typical (good) project in Unix systems build with commands
./configure
make
sudo make install
or
cmake CMakelists.txt
make all
sudo make install
That's what you need to do after downloading a source tarball online to install unix programs.
Now since you are using Mac, there are so-called package installers, one which is macports and homebrew. I personally suggest homebrew than macports here (I've tried both, although macports still outnumber homebrew with the number of repos, homebrew has the newest support, especially when upgrading to a new OS). So to install homebrew you can do
/usr/bin/ruby -e "$(curl -fsSL https://raw.githubusercontent.com/Homebrew/install/master/install)"
Execute that in your terminal (see http://brew.sh/) for more information.
Then you could simply install GNUplot by
brew install gnuplot