Is it possible to cross-compile a program targeting a Cygwin environment from a Linux/Unix host? I'm mostly trying to avoid using a Windows WM for building a collection of programs.
From the website:
Cygwin is not:
a way to run native Linux apps on Windows. You must rebuild your application from source if you want it to run on Windows.
mingw-w64 is not enough, I need a full POSIX platform. I'm also wondering if it's possible to target MSYS2.
Perhaps I'm not understanding correctly, and one doesn't need to compile in Cygwin but only mingw-w64 is necessary.
Thanks!
It is possible to compile for Cygwin from Linux.
The cygwin1.dll itself is built in such way.
Packages/libraries are available at:
https://copr.fedorainfracloud.org/coprs/yselkowitz/cygwin/
Of course only a minimal set of tools/libraries is available
Related
I have been wondering about building Windows executables targeting Cygwin on
a Linux host.
I have not been able to find anything related to a prebuilt crosscompiler and I am lost about how to build one myself with a Cygwin target.
How would I proceed?
Thanks in advance.
A cross-tool is available at:
https://sourceforge.net/projects/fedora-cygwin/
A repository for Fedora is at:
https://copr.fedorainfracloud.org/coprs/yselkowitz/cygwin/
as mentioned on the Cygwin mailing list not so long ago
https://cygwin.com/pipermail/cygwin/2020-July/245695.html
Is there an actual reason you want to target Cygwin instead of native Windows?
Cygwin introduces a POSIX compatibility layer, while MinGW-w64 targets native Windows.
MinGW-w64 can be installed under most Linux distributions using their respective package managers.
Can a python 3 script be compiled in a linux environment in such a way as it can be run under Windows?
If so what compile tool? ie. py2exe or pyinstaller ect.
You're looking for cross-compilation, and the answer is no.
Can I package Windows binaries while running under Linux?
No, this is not supported. Please use Wine for this, PyInstaller runs fine in Wine. You may also want to have a look at this thread in the mailinglist. In version 1.4 we had build in some support for this, but it showed to work only half. It would require some Windows system on another partition and would only work for pure Python programs. As soon as you want a decent GUI (gtk, qt, wx), you would need to install Windows libraries anyhow. So it's much easier to just use Wine.
Can I package Windows binaries while running under OS X?
No, this is not supported. Please try Wine for this.
Can I package OS X binaries while running under Linux?
This is currently not possible at all. Sorry! If you want to help out, you are very welcome.
You may use Wine or the Windows Subsystem for Linux to attempt using PyInstaller to build stand-alone binaries for different operating systems, however, neither PyInstaller, nor Py2Exe, nor cx_freeze, nor any tool to my knowledge does this.
Effectively, in-order to do something like this, you would need a cross-compiler such as MinGW or VC++ for Linux, and integrate it into PyInstaller, which is very far outside of the scope of the project. It is much easier to use WINE or having a dual-boot system or multiple development computers.
I am developing a software in C++ on windows 32-bit (using MSVC++), but since I want to be able to use my software on every platform, I have decided to use CMake as my build generator.
Therefore, I am still just a beginner in CMake. From the CMake tutorials, I understand that in order to cross compile codes, first a toolchain simulating the target platform should be installed on the host platform. Then using the appropriate target-platform C and C++ compilers provided by this toolchain, CMake would be able to generate makefiles etc.
Now, I want to build my code for Linux platform(GNU/Linux) on a Win32 platform. I tried doing the above procedure using CMake combined with Cygwin and using gcc and g++ as compilers. It built fine, created makefiles, and when I issued "make" in Cygwin terminal, the generated makefiles were "made". Now I have got an executable which I was hoping would run on Linux platform. But on Linux I get the error: bash cannot execute binary file.
Using command file executablename, I realized the executable which is made by the above procedure is of type PE32 which is only for Windows.
Now my question is: Is my understanding of cross-platform build procedure using cmake correct?Or should I just use another Linux toolchain under windows to get a Linux ELF executable? What toolchains come to your mind which would give me what I want?
Many thanks
Setareh
You will want to look here: cmake-toolchains(7) if you do cross compiling. However, I would suggest that you install a Linux VM like virtual box on your windows machine and build naively on Linux. It will compile much faster and you will not have to worry about cross compiling. You can mount the windows disk from the linux VM so you can share the same source tree. The linux VM will compile much faster than gcc running under windows.
Your understanding of CMake is correct... it will determine how to create the build system you request (or is default for the platform you are currently on) based on rules in your CMakeLists.txt file. However, this won't necessarily help you compile for linux on a windows machine if you don't have something installed that can target linux.
To compile targeting linux, you will need to use a linux compiler. The link posted by #stjin tells you how to install one on cygwin. Then, to set up your CMake build, do this in the terminal:
CC=gcc-linux CXX=g++-linux cmake . [options]
This will tell CMake to locate the special linux targeted compilers. Hopefuly, after compiling with these compilers you will be able to run on linux.
Will I have to use the crosstool that cygwin provides to make the libX11.so, libGL.so, and libGLU.so libraries using their respective source code? Or do you know where I can find them compiled already for crosstool (I'm new to this cross compilation)?
Just for clarification: I'm on a windows 7 machine trying to get my application also to compile for linux systems by using cygwin's cross compilation. The application uses OpenGL. Thanks
To cross-compile for Linux you should install the needed development libs and headers on a linux box[1] and then copy /usr/lib and /usr/include your cygwin environment (e.g. /crosscompiler/linux/...). When you build the cross compiler in cygwin, tell it where those native linux headers and libs are so they'll be used when you compile your app.
[1] If you're looking to run on a wide variety of linux boxes make sure you pick an older linux distro (e.g. Red Hat 9) to ensure your app doesn't have dependencies on very new glibc, etc..
Why do you want to use Cygwin?
There is instructions on the OpenGL Wiki about how to use OpenGL on Windows using MinGW.
MinGW use the same GNU tools that are available on Linux (GCC, GDB, GMAKE, etc.) but produce Windows native executables. So, you shouldn't have trouble compiling your source code on both platforms.
I just ended up building on a native Linux machine.
I need to cross compile my QT application in Linux. I compiled my application from the QT SDK in Linux and it is working properly.
How do I create an .exe for the same application in Linux. I have installed Mingw in Linux and qmake, but I dont know how to proceed with cross compiling.
How do I link my QT with a cross compiler like MinGW and Qmake. I am using SuSE Linux. I have also gone through http://Silmore/29 but I am not getting a clear picture of how to proceed futher.
I'm not familiar with SuSE, but Ubuntu has the mingw32 packages which is a windows targetted cross compiler, along with the open source win32api:
(source: liranuna.com)
After a small search, turns out there are RPMs for it here, while it should probably be in your repositories.
Basically, you use your cross-toolchain for the Make process rather than the host toolchain. I assume there is no autotools configure script. If there is you can run configure with --host specified and have it all figured out for you.
So what you'll need to do is set CC, LD, CFLAGs, LDFLAGS (probably also CXX and CXXFLAGS) and modify the Makefile to use the right QT libraries - which will need to be mingw, not your Linux libraries. So you may also need to obtain the MinGW/Windows QT SDK and store it separately so your paths cam be specified properly.
Hope this helps!
You could run the Visual C++ Express Edition 2008 cl.exe through wine to compile your project.