My coworker and I are both using Go 1.9 x64. I'm running Linux Mint 18.2 and he's running macOS Sierra 10.12.6. We ran the exact same script to cross compile a program for Windows x64 and out of curiosity we diffed the files to see how similar they would be. We expected to find a few build parameters or IDs to be different but it turns out there are a LOT of differences all throughout the files.
We made sure the two programs were built off the exact same code. The program really doesn't do anything too OS specific. It reads a JSON file and executes a series of web requests determined by that file. Nothing like executing shell commands or reading/writing the windows registry. No CGO, the only use of the os package is os.Exit(code) calls, nothing stands out as a culprit.
Even though the programs were built from two different host OSes, they were both built for the same target OS with the same version of the Go compiler and the same code files. Why are the output binaries so different?
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I have the feeling that this would involve major nitty-gritty-details-stuff, nevertheless I'd like to give it a try:
Actual question
What do I need to do to set up an cross-compiler environment that allows me to build package binaries for platforms other than MS Windows (I guess at the moment this would only be Mac OS's tgz binaries) on MS Windows? The accepted answer in this post suggested that this is possible.
Background
I have quite a few mac users in my university's beginners R course that don't really know their way around the system specifics of Mac OS and therefore would be overextended with setting up the necessary development tools it takes to compile from source on Mac OS. Therefore, I'd like to offer them a tgz binary, but I need to compile on Windows as there's no apple hardware available to me.
Is it possible to develop cross-platform application on Windows and can also compile for Mac OS X from Windows? I have checked Qt but that requires one to compile from Mac using Xcode.
If this is your priority then one option would be Java as at least a jar file built on one platform can be run on another.
If however you're talking about C or C++...
If you are creating a small command line tool then you might be able to make this work with gcc and a cross compiler, but I think it would be a lot of work.
If however you are wanting to create a GUI application I would urge you to give up now. There are so many issues - you'd have to use Carbon or Cocoa APIs which you can't build for on any other platform, you'd have to link against frameworks which won't exist on your compilation host, you won't be able to easily generate .plist files. Qt won't help as you need to be able to build it, which relies on these same frameworks.
In short, there's no alternative to building on an actual mac.
Furthermore, when it comes to fixing bugs, you will absolutely have to do this on a mac (either physical or virtual).
From what I know , in general you do need a mac to make the executable , even for a simple ansi c program you need gcc for mac.
You can create MacPorts Portfile.(If your application is open source)
A MacPorts port is a set of specifications contained in a Portfile
that defines an application, its characteristics, and any files or
special instructions required to install it. This allows you to use a
single command to tell MacPorts to automatically download, compile,
and install applications and libraries.
Take a look at IMCROSS.
IMCROSS is a simple, scripted method of installing cross-compilers and
cross-compiled libraries on a Linux (or possibly other *nix) system,
so that you can develop programs targeted to run on Microsoft Windows
and Mac OS X at the same time and in the same environment as you
develop Linux versions of those programs.
You can certainly do this using Real Studio. It can create Mac OS X applications on Windows without any trouble.
It cross-compiles for Windows, OS X and Linux. And it does it from any platform. It also can create web apps.
Sounds like you should check it out.
I have done a little work on lazarus' free pascal. So when a client asked me to write an application for a mac, after the initial, "it can't be done" stage. (followed by an asp.net maybe stage) i thought about writing it using lazarus.
Question is. I have only a virtual machine running mac OSX, this means that i do not really want to develop on the mac. However, i just cannot seem to get the applications that i have written in lazarus on windows to work on the mac. I have tried the deployment using the Lazarus Wiki and the MACOS folder is empty and so when i put it on the mac it doesn't run the application.
What is the best way of doing this or am i barking up the wrong tree?
It seems you want to do cross-compiling, which is theoretically possible, but may not be practical, for the reasons mentioned by Marco above.
As an alternative, you could install XCode, FreePascal, and Lazarus on a MacOX machine. You could still do your development and some testing on Windows/Linux. When you hit a certain milestone, you can copy your source code to the Mac and compile your application to test and give to the user.
Even if it were possible to easily cross-compile, there some minor differences between platforms, so (especially if it's a GUI app), you would want to test it on an actual MacOS box before giving it to the client.
I've taken the route described by Noah - and I was incredibly surprised that after about three weeks development on Windows, it took about 10 minutes to get the application running on the Mac.
My route was to install Xcode 4.3 on an old Mac Mini running snow leopard, then install Lazarus using the fink version as described here. This took a while but was done in an evening.
Then I just copied my folder across to the Mac, opened the lpi on the Mac, compiled it. It failed so I removed a windows references, recompiled, and it was working. I was truly amazed.
What linker and assembler do you use to generate binaries? To my best knowledge the linker for recent OS X versions is not available in source.
Afaik what you want (crosscompiling to Mac) is not possible for recent versions (and I've done it for PowerPC myself in the past).
The easiest is to use the Unix "file" command on the binary to see what is generated, and make sure it reads something with "MachO" in it. Easiest is if you have a Linux install (where this command is pretty standard), but versions can be found for windows too (cygwin, mingw and 3rd party)
I am trying to compile lanshark for mac, but do not know how to compile on mac. I am guessing that it is possible to compile linux source code on mac. if not how can i get this program to run?
A mac is, under the hood, a BSD 'darwin' box.
Go and take a look at the MacPorts webpage. You'll find lots of interesting information (like where to get a compiler etc ) there.
Another place to go for an apple development environment is apple (xcode) ...
It should be possible to get that to run, but it will be a bit of work. The source may need a small amount of modification, depending on exactly how the protocol works (if they're using raw ethernet, that is done quite differently). Also, the OS X linker (ld) works completely differently to the Linux linker, and so the build system will need a bit of tinkering.
However, the compilers and build utilities are in the XCode bundle on your install disk, or at the download link in the other answer, so install that and give it a go. If you're lucky, just following the Linux instructions will build it.
I'm using QT Creator on a project and was wondering if there's a single command to compile the project to a Mac, Windows, & Linux binaries so I can easily send them to other computers for testing without having to send over the whole source code. Currently I'm running the QT Creator on Mac OSX if that matters.
This is possible, but it isn't as simple as you imply. To properly do this, you would need to set up a cross-compiling environment complete with libraries already compiled for the other platforms, and compilers/executables compiled for your platform that produce output for the other platform. You would then need to keep track of all these variables somehow in your qmake file to be sure you're producing the correct output.