I'm using gfortran with minGW under windows to generate 64-bit executables. It works great. What I'd like to do, however, it to provide executable to other folk who do not have minGW on their machine. I.e. to make fully portable code. (Some of the folk who use the programs have "locked" machines, where the system administrators would not allow them to install minGW.) Any suggestion on how I can make the executables such that they can be used on any machine that can run 64-bit windows, without that anything else has to be installed on the machine running the executable?
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I would like to compile the Linux-based mail client, Geary, for my Windows computer.
I'm wondering if I could compile it using a program such as MonoDevelop on my Linux machine with the target being Windows, or if I'll have to use cygwin or mingw on my Windows machine.
Thanks
You can cross compile on Linux to Windows. There is a MinGW build for Linux. Use valac -C to produce C sources then i586-mingw32msvc-gcc to compile the sources and link against Windows DLLs of the libraries needed. Vala determines includes using pkg-config which will pick up compilation arguments from the host system. You can override this by setting PKGCONFIG_PATH to the directories where your Windows libraries' .pc files live.
Alternatively to compiling, you can run Geary on Windows 10 via the WSL.
This question here lead to give it a try. It can be done, but requires many steps and it doesn’t work very well for the time being.
https://heracl.es/ephemera/2018/08/08/geary/
Do you really need to compile it? If you have windows 10, you can run a linux environment, for instance ubuntu. Then Geary runs. I can confirm, as I have it running NOW.
There are several tutorials on how to get Ubuntu running in the WSL on Win10.
I have a C project with a Makefile, I want to build it on windows. I downloaded GNU Make installed. And I have VS2010. The make file has UNIX commands like cc, nvcc and g++. I have to replace them with MS C, CUDA and C++ compilers right? What are the command line commands I have to replace them with? Is there anything I need to install?
I want to do it without Cygwin (it's installation is taking forever), otherwise Cygwin is the fallback method.
You don't actually have to replace any of those commands with the Windows-variant. A working compiler will still compile source code just fine even if it isn't the defacto compiler for an operating system.
I hear ya on the Cygwin bit--you can just install a Minimal GNU environment using MinGW and that'll give you everything that you need to be able to the utilize the Unix makefile.
I am using Cygwin and have GCC (version 4.3.4 20090804 (release) 1 ) installed as Cygwin package.
When I built C code using GCC under Cygwin shell, the generated executable output file is a executable of type (PE32 executable for MS Windows (console) Intel 80386 32-bit) and it can only be executed/run under Cygwin shell, not as standalone .exe on Windows shell/command prompt. If I try to run it standalone on Windows command prompt it gives an error window saying "The program can't run because cygwin.dll is missing from your computer".
How can one make this .exe standalone, which can be executed on a command prompt of any other system or even in my own system?
I thought GCC under Cygwin would build a Linux executable (ELF 32-bit LSB executable), but it's not so. How can I use the gcc-cygwin combination to generate a *.out kind of Linux executable file?
Also, I cannot run a Linux executable generated on a Linux-gcc combination to execute under Cygwin.
Any pointers would be helpful.
Despite widespread rumours, Cygwin is not a Linux emulator, i.e. it doesn't produce or run Linux executables. For that you'll need a virtual machine or coLinux.
Instead, Cygwin is a compatibility layer, which aims to implement as much as possible of the POSIX and Linux APIs within Windows. This means that programs have to be compiled specifically for Cygwin, but it also means that it's better integrated with Windows, e.g. it lets you mix POSIX and Windows APIs in the same program.
It's the cygwin1.dll that provides that compatibility layer. If you build non-Cygwin executables using gcc-3's -mno-cygwin switch or one of the MinGW compilers, then of course you can't use any POSIX/Linux-specific APIs, and any such calls will need to be replaced with Windows equivalents.
Cygwin is an emulation layer. It allows UNIX code to run on Windows, if you compile it to use the emulation layer. To Windows it looks like any normal DLL and makes OS calls as normal. But when you compile against it, it shows the same functions as UNIX (well, POSIX technically, but UNIX it is)
1) When you build with cygwin, it automatically brings in this cygwin1.dll. This is the code that you need to make it look like UNIX. There are flags to make it not use this cygwin dll, meaning ignore the UNIX stuff and use native Windows calls. the -mno-cygwin flag will make the binary a native Windows binary, not using cygwin emulation. As others have said, you also need the -mwindows to make actual GUI apps using cygwin gcc.
2) To compile on one platform to run on another platform, you need what's called a cross compiler. You also need the libraries and headers for the other system. For what you want you'd need a cygwin-Linux cross compiler, Linux headers and libraries. It would probably be much easier to run Linux in a virtual machine than to set this up.
3) Remember that Cygwin just looks like UNIX to UNIX source code, not to Linux binaries. Once you compile things, the function calls are windows DLL calls. A cygwin program is still a Windows program (which is why you need a Windows style DLL to run it). Cygwin provides code for UNIX functions/system calls such as fork(), but even the method of calling them is now different. fork() now calls into a Windows DLL, not into a Linux kernel. It's still a very different system.
Not a complete answer, but I think I am able to give some pointers.
1) http://www.cygwin.com/cygwin-ug-net/programming.html says you should use -mswindows parameter. Take a look of MinGW.
2) You need a cross gcc to do this. By default cygwin gcc produces binaries linked against cygwin.dll.
3) That it because it is a linux binary. Easiest way is to recompile software in cygwin.
ad 1) There are currently three different mingw cross-compilers available for cygwin:
The old gcc3 -mno-cygwin is deprecated.
There are new mingw64 cross-compilers for 32 bit (mingw64-i686-gcc) and 64 bit windows targets (mingw64-x86_64-gcc).
There's no mingw-i686-gcc matching the official cygwin gcc4 compiler yet.
ad 2) There's no linux cross-compiler as cygwin package yet available. But people report success building such a cross-compiler by themselves.
ad 3) There's no cygwin cross-compiler as linux package available, but many mingw cross-compilers. Those mingw executables can also be executed under cygwin, though they cannot use cygwin features, just the simple windows runtime.
Correcting errors in others people posts:
-mswindows is not valid, -mwindows tells the linker to generate a GUI app without console.
-mno-cygwin is only valid for the old deprecated gcc3 compiler and is not supported anymore. Don't use it. With cygwin you should use ordinary host and target triples as with every other cross-compiler.
You need to have cygwin.dll in your path.
Or just use MinGW to compile native windows code without dependencies.
I have cygwin on windows through which I run gcc. But after creating .exe files, if I run them on other computers which dont have cygwin, it says cygwin1.dll not found. Is there a way to compile them so that they run on any system?
You need to compile for MinGW (Minimal GNU Win32) mode. You do that by either installing mingw instead of (or in addition to) cygwin, or by passing the --mno-cygwin compiler option to the cygwin gcc.
In your case, try to copy cygwin1.dll as well (but it could depend on other DLLs as well) (of course you must comply with Cygwin's license with regards to distributing cygwin1.dll)
In cygwin, you can always check the needed modules using:
objdump -p a.exe | grep 'DLL Name'
OR
cygcheck ./a.exe
or for windows in general, use something like this tool: Dependency Walker
You can try compiling with the command line option -mno-cygwin.
See the Cygwin FAQ.
From http://cygwin.com/faq/faq.html#faq.programming.win32-no-cygwin
How do I compile a Win32 executable that doesn't use Cygwin?
The compilers provided by the mingw-gcc, mingw64-i686-gcc, and mingw64-x86_64-gcc packages link against standard Microsoft DLLs instead of Cygwin. This is desirable for native Windows programs that don't need a UNIX emulation layer.
This is not to be confused with 'MinGW' (Minimalist GNU for Windows), which is a completely separate effort.
I've installed cygwin environment on Windows.
There is gcc 4.3. How to install gcc 4.4 in this environment?
The alternative is to build one yourself, but it will be extremely slow on cygwin. If you are a Linux user, you can build a native compiler (which runs in cmd.exe on windows, and produces native win32 binaries) on Linux. It is much faster (order of magnitude faster in my experience).
Otherwise, mingw is a good solution, although in my experience, the binary from equation.com work better for gcc 4.4 (there is no official gcc 4.4 from MinGW yet)
If you don't need the cygwin environment for special reasons, I'd go for Mingw with the gcc 4.4. You can find builds on: http://www.tdragon.net/recentgcc/.
Reading the MinGW FAQ, reveals that its possible to pass requests to use the MinGW binaries instead of the ones shipped with Cygwin.
For those who would like to use the Cygwin environment for development, yet generate non-Cygwin-dependant executables, a much easier option to "-mno-cygwin" does exist. Simply install Cygwin and the MinGW distribution in separate directories (i.e. "C:\CYGWIN" and "C:\MINGW"), and make sure that the "/bin" subdirectory beneath your MinGW installation comes before Cygwin's "/bin" subdirectory in your PATH environment variable (i.e. "PATH=%PATH%;C:\MINGW\BIN;C:\CYGWIN\BIN"). This will allow you access to all the UNIX tools you want, while ensuring that the instance of GCC used is the MinGW version. %%%
Bear in mind that within the "/etc/profile" file, Cygwin by default places "/usr/local/bin", "/usr/bin", and "/bin" ahead of your system-level PATH. Therefore, it is not enough to have the MinGW's "/bin" ahead of Cygwin in your Windows path... it must also be set to come first within the Cygwin environment (either by modifying "/etc/profile" or setting it manually).