I've found NOTHING helpful on the Internet, so I think I'm going have
to give this one up. An idea that never even got off the ground. It
exploded in the hangar. Apple can be as stupid as Microsoft in some ways.
-Aidan
Delio Brignoli wrote:
Hi,
Even though what you are trying to do is theoretically possible by
wasting countless hours chasing up a version of gcc's source with apple
patches and then making it work, breaking some licenses by installing
their SDK libs on a different platform and then rewriting a number of
utilities used by the build process I do not recommend you try.
Sadly, Apple does not support compiling for OSX on any platform other
than... (drum roll) OSX.
Also Apple does not allow you to run their OS in a virtual machine. So I
believe you will not be able to compile an executable targeted to OSX
from your linux machine :(
Xcode is downloadable as an *huge* (a little more than 1GB) disk image
from Apple. It is made up of an IDE, gcc, Apple's substitute for "make",
SDK libraries for various versions of their OS and a thousands other
development related utilities.
Xcode will be easy to use if all you need to do is build: open project
file, hit build&run icon.
HTH (at least to avoid hours of fruitless attempts)
--
Delio
On 9/02/2008, at 4:06 PM, Aidan Gauland wrote:
If I was just trying to compile some command line program (like lynx),
this would be a dawdle (probably). But this program's build
environment for Mac OS X uses Xcode, AND it makes a .app directory,
for the Finder (if you don't know what the .... I'm talking
about.....sorry, I just looked, and couldn't find anything explanatory
on the net....it's just some weird way of organising files and folders
in a directory named "foo.app", so it shows up to the Finder as a
single file. Lets not start an OS API flame war now though.) So that
complicates this problem a bit, and is what I need help with.
-Aidan
Volker Kuhlmann wrote:
On Fri 08 Feb 2008 19:12:24 NZDT +1300, A Thomas wrote:
Long version: I use Linux at home (duh), and the school I go to uses
Mac OS X (some Intel, some PPC), and I want to be able to use this
program at the school, but it would be a pain to compile it on the
school computers (mainly because I would have to puzzle out Xcode),
also if I need a new feature or bug fix in a new version, I would have
to go through this all again. So if I could compile this program for
Mac, from Linux, that would save a lot of time.
What did your googling come up with? I put in "gcc macosx crosscompile
linux" and the top link to ubuntuforums is right on topic, but not all
that helpful - people who heard "gcc" and "cross-copile" in the same
sentence answering that gcc can do it, but otherwise not much clue to
the how (pretty much my experience with ubuntuforums in general - all
question, not much answer).
You're dealing with a complex issue and need to look at it one step at a
time. What gcc calls cross-compile is generating code for one processsor
on another one. Yes gcc can do that. You'll have to recompile gcc for
that as AFAIK no Linux distributor ships a gcc which is compiled for
more than the architecture it's running on. Keep in mind that gcc
compiles for processors only - it's what it calls hosts or
architectures, it does not really compile for operating systems. For
Apples you're looking at PPC and x86.
If you want to make the code actually run on another OS, you'll have to
get a linker which can all of a) create executable code for that
OS, b) link against the standard runtime environment of that OS, c) link
against any other libraries that the OS or your application uses. At
least b) needs substantial information about "macosx" on your Linux
machine - you guessed it, it's not there. You get to put it there first.
As pointed out by others, you'll need that xcode, it's unclear to me
whether it is available on Linux. Also, comments like "on mac osx we use
a specially doctored gcc made by apple" don't suggest to me that
develop-on-Linux-run-on-Macosx is that far advanced.
So this is what you need to sort out. If you make it, let us all know
and write it up somewhere. My guess is that only someone proficient in
developing on both Linux and Macosx independently will be able to put
something like this together, esp as all the parts might not yet be
available.
Volker
