I know about several projects for cross compiling between linux and Windows.
The Wine project is great for running windows application inside Linux.
andLinux is a linux running inside Windows.
My question is, can we compile a complete linux OS with a Windows compiler (like mingw32, visual studio , ...) in order to get a linux system which is fully compatible with the Windows PE executable format ?
As wine demonstrates, the PE format isn't really the problem with compatibility.
PE only defines how the program is pieced together at load time. Under windows, RUNDLL interprets it, loads all the program sections to memory, loads all the supporting dlls to memory and patches up the function pointers so that there is a program sitting in memory ready to go. (See http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ms809762.aspx for more details. Its a good read!)
There is little stopping you writing a kernel module to do all of this. With the details in the page linked above it may not be to hard and someone may already have done it.
The real issue is the fundamentals of the operating system. Even if linux could load a PE, there would be problems around the fundamental difference in file names (\ or /) as well as the permissions model which is different and the windows registry which doesn't exist under linux. That's before you get into the different windowing model for GUIs.
Therefore the task of getting a windows program to run under linux is less about the program loader and much more about emulating all of the windows DLLs under Linux. As i understand it, this is the main heart of wine.
Related
NW.js has this feature it calls "Protect JavaScript Source Code": https://nwjs.readthedocs.io/en/latest/For%20Users/Advanced/Protect%20JavaScript%20Source%20Code/
The JavaScript source code of your application can be protected by compiling to native code and loaded by NW.js. You only have to distribute the compiled code with your app for production.
JS source code is compiled to native code with the tool nwjc , which is provided in the SDK build.
The compiled code is not cross-platform nor compatible between versions of NW.js. So you’ll need to run nwjc for each of the platforms when you package your application.
I downloaded the SDK distributions for Windows, Mac and Linux, and looked into the files inside them.
The Windows one has a "nwjc.exe" file, ready to be used and works. Good.
But the Mac and Linux ones have no .exe, but instead just a "nwjc" executable. This is obviously for running on macOS and Linux, respectively. Huh?
My used OS is Windows. I am developing my NW.js application on Windows, to be distributed on Windows, Mac and Linux. And I cannot run those Linux/macOS executables on a Windows system. But I have to do so, since they are for some reason not cross-platform.
This seems like a dead end to me. I either have to not "protect" my application (and thus have it stolen/copied/broken/hacked), or buy two separate computers (one expensive Mac and one PC for Linux) and do this step on those. Which of course defeats the whole point of "simple" cross-platform development.
Before you say so, I have tried running Linux in a VM and it's terrible. And Macs cannot even be legally emulated AFAIK.
Most likely, this is going to cause my application to be Windows-only, which is really sad since a major reason for going this route was to have "simple" cross-platformness which "just works".
Is there something I'm missing about this?
PS: I already do "crush" my code with Uglify-JS, before the "protection" stage.
The source protection works by saving a copy of the application as it is currently running in the OS's memory. This means you must run the command on the actual operating system, so it can load the app into memory and then save it as a V8 snapshot (V8 is the JS engine used by Chromium/Node/NW.js).
You can use tools like VirtualBox or VMWare to emulate other OS's on Windows. Getting OSX to run in an emulator is a pain, but there are youtube tutorials to explain how. Linux is very easy though, I'd start there if you are unfamiliar. Though running your application on actual hardware and manually testing in each OS is always best.
If this is too cumbersome, then you may consider not worrying about source protection until later. You can still set up your app for distribution on the other OS's without needing to emulate them if you don't use this feature. Though again, always best to manually test on each OS.
I am fully aware of products like Wine and PlayOnLinux for using Windows application on Linux, but why am I unable to run .exe files on Linux? Is it because of something in the architecture of Windows operating systems that Linux doesn't use? Is it possible to create a linux distro or work with an existing one (Ubuntu, Mint, Debian, etc) to run .exe and .deb? If it is possible, what could be looked into and researched to be able to do so?
An executable file is a set of instructions the tells the program loader how to place the program in memory. An executable file can in turn reference shared libraries that are essentially executable files as well so the loading process is recursive.
First of all, the operating systems program loader needs to be able understand executable file format. This, the Linux loader does not do.
Second, any shared libraries referenced by the executable need to be available. Those libraries referenced in a windoze application are not going to be available on a linux system.
Even if you could get the past the first two hurdles, the operating systems would need to respond to system service calls in the same way. When you call an open file system service in Windows a linux system might interpret that as a close file system service call (or anything) (On Intel there are multiple ways of invoking system services).
I am in a strange scenario, where I must use a work windows 8 desktop how ever I am writing code to be run on a real time Linux machine. I am writing code for a Real-time system, so will need to implement many non-windows headers like RTAI and such. Obviously I can not run these on windows 8, so was curious if anyone had any suggestions for compiling and testing without having to upload code to the RTOS based computer I am programming for each time I want to run a program. I unfortunately can't use a virtual machine and would like to avoid coding in the terminal in order to remotely code on the linux machine.
Any suggestions?
You can code in Windows or whatever OS you like, what system your programming computer uses has absolutely nothing to do with the target system.
The cross compiler you are using must obviously be for the intended target system. Same goes for debugger & program download tools. Your program must either run in a simulator or it must run on the real target. The latter is strongly recommended.
So all you have to do is to acquire the right software tools. Since these are almost always written for Windows, that should be easy.
I want to compile and later modify a Linux kernel code but I cannot do it by installing and running separate Linux system like Ubuntu and then compiling this kernel on linux system as I am not able to work on full fledged Linux system(Laptop hardware problems).I want to do it on Windows 7.Is there a way that I can do it?
The Linux kernel source tree has different files in some directories whose names only differ in capitalization, so unpacking the source tree would have to happen in a directory where the POSIX compatibility mode was active. Furthermore, you need a cross compiler targetting Linux, and an appropriate shell environment.
It can be done within the Cygwin environment if so desired, but I suspect it is significantly easier to run a Linux virtual machine, or CoLinux.
i Think you are talking about this have a look on this site they provide a way to compile and modify and infact build a new kernel in Visual Studio hope it will help you
I have to check installation steps of my application on different production machines. I want to check how can I install my application on HP UX. I have only linux/windows machines but dont have real physical HP unix machine. Is there any way i can check installation steps of HP unix. I am thinking of any virtual environment or any flavour that run on linux or windows which gives accessiblity and functionality of HP unix.
I am looking something to cross check platfrom installation steps.
The short answer is no. HP-UX is as different from Linux as Linux is from Windows (almost). There would be many differences in libraries, patches, installed utilities, build tools, etc.
A few examples:
HP-UX does not come pre-installed with the bash shell
HP-UX uses a proprietary software packager and installer called swinstall (analogous to RPM but completely different)
Partition layout is different
Many common utilities behave differently. "echo" is one of many examples. This will affect things if your build process uses shell utilities
Even if you can test the install, don't you need to test the product's operation on HP-UX?
Not saying it's impossible. If your application uses basic, nonspecific utilities for install, it might work. There is no way to know without a running installation. Unfortunately you need Itanium hardware and the O/S.
My recommendation would be to get your application working on Solaris and any other Unixes first. The more platforms you test on, the more portable your code will become on all of them. Then, put out some feelers and find someone with a system you can borrow time on.
Worst case, find an Itanium server like an rx2620 on eBay, should not cost too much. Even better if the seller forgets to wipe the O/S :). You'll need a terminal and possibly null modem. 11.31 (11iv3) is the latest version of the O/S.