Neil Pilgrim wrote: > Helen Faulkner wrote: > >> Neil Pilgrim wrote: > > [...] > >>> Interested to hear what people think wrt platforms/systems in which to >>> write a front-end for a console scientific app (typically long-running). > > [...] > >>> What would people recommend? >> >> >> I use C++ + wxWidgets for the apps that run my (theoretical optics) >> simulations. >> I chose wxWidgets for writing the GUI mainly because it is available for >> windows too, and this allowed me to cross-compile my code into windows >> .exes for >> people in my group who don't use linux. > > > My current simulation code is also c++, but if I were to aim for > multi-platform GUI, that wasn't too performance-sensitive, then I would > be inclined to go for something like python/wxpython or similar. I'm > sure that once C++ codes are compiled then they are easier to use/setup, > but afaict python seems to something that (within reason) should just > run with few changes - and installation can be managed through a .exe? > > Not currently using windows, I wouldn't be keen to get involved in going > through the (presumed) hassle necessary to get it compiled under windows > - or do you use cygwin or msys(mingw) ?
I cross-compile using Debian's mingw32 package. You have to first cross-compile the libraries that your code depends on (for me that's fftw3, blitz++, wxWidgets, gsl...), then cross-compile your own code, linking to the cross-compiled libraries. I use kdevelop, which makes it easy to compile the different versions of my code, and I've had enough practise at cross-compiling by now that it's not a big hassle to do, especially since you only need to cross-compile the libraries once. The cross-compiling commands for the libraries go like this: /wxWindows-2.4.2/windows> ../configure --host=i586-mingw32msvc --build=i686-pc-linux-gnu--target=i586-mingw32msvc --disable-shared --prefix=/home/username/mingw32 Where we assume a created windows/ dir in the top level directory of the wxWindows source tree and that /home/username/mingw32 is where you want the cross-compiled libraries to go. The final result is a statically linked windows .exe. It's large, but ok for my purposes. It needs a .dll file for mingw (mingw10.dll) to run. >> I decided to switch to a GUI interface precisely to make it easier to >> see which >> parameters were being changed when, and so I could easily do things >> like keep a >> running count of the simulation results (I mainly deal with longish >> iterative >> algorithms) and draw graphs representing the state of the system. I'm >> sure >> there are other things that would work as well, though, especially >> since qt is >> now better licensed. > > > Do you use a wx plotting tool, or something like matplotlib? There seems > to be some glue code to allow these to work together, which looks quite > good. I use the wx plotting tools to draw my own plots, which are simple greyscale representations of the data. I haven't tried matplotlib. > I thought that QT under windows required a commercial license for > distributing, or has this changed? As Christian said, this changed recently. Seeing as I use kde, I might well have chosen qt over wxWidgets had the licensing change happened before I made that decision. But I'm happy enough with wx now. Helen -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with a subject of "unsubscribe". Trouble? Contact [EMAIL PROTECTED]
