I want to create applications in windows that has complete portability (within windows OSes of course). I have tried using one application written in Visual C++ but I had a real tough time in making it run in other windows OS (like it required .net framework libraries to be installed). This put me on the back foot because I had to copy a set of DLLs from one machine to another and most of the time something works some does not.
And I am TOTAL amateur in writing windows based applications since my technological forte is mostly Java. Where to kick off? (like which tools/IDEs to begin with since I am seriously into writing my own utilities/tools).
I am open to clarification should you guys feel my question is vague/blunt.
Thanks.
Visual C++ should be easily able to do what you want. It sounds like you created a C++/.NET project, which will generate a dependency on the .net libraries. You need to choose a different project type when the wizard starts up.
If you have a paid version of Visual C++, you might try clicking on "MFC Application". A lot of people are down on MFC these days, but it's still a quick way to get a C++ Windows app off the ground. Make sure you choose the option to statically link the MFC libraries, or you'll have another dependency.
MFC isn't included in the free version of Visual C++, so you'll need to go old-school and work directly with the Windows API or find another package such as QT or Wx to link with.
You can use .NET, and if you stay in 2.0, use standard components, it should work fine. You may need to make a few changes to work anywhere, buy very possible.
http://www.mono-project.com/Main_Page
You could either use Visual Studio or the free IDE. Sharp develope or Mono Develope.
If you really want it to work on every version of windows your best bet may be to go the route of full cross-compatibility. Grab the Boost, QT, and possibly ACE libraries and stay away from making OS calls directly. There's a free version of Visual Studio which is probably what you want for an IDE for personal development, if you're doing commercial stuff then get the full version.
Why not use Java. The JVM is on more systems then .NET and now your app will work on any OS not just windows. Plus java is easier for a beginner then C/C++ and less chance that your program will cause BSODs.
Related
I have a few years of experience writing Unix command line tools (no GUI experience) in python, C and C++, and only recently crossed into the GUI world (Cocoa and IOS only). I've learned quite a bit of objective-C and am getting to understand how cocoa MVC works. However, one of the apps I am developing needs a Windows version and I was wondering what a good place to start would be given that I have absolutely no Windows development experience.
I was thinking about using Visual C++ 2010 Express as my development platform (because it's free and because I don't need to learn C++). My application is relatively simple, it will have only two windows and spend most of the time running in the background. It will however need to communicate with the OS (load dll's etc) and an online server (HTTP methods) and I'm not sure whether Visual C++ Express edition gives me access to the required API's. Would a Windows Forms application suffice? Am I going about this the wrong way? Do I need to learn C#? Any advice will be appreciated.
If you are already happy with proper c++, visual Studio C++ express should suit you fine. Given that you are not making a complicated GUI, you don't even need to dip into the managed code - C++ express allows you to create proper c++ console and GUI apps. You also don't need to install the platform SDK - it is part of VS C++ express.
Not being managed C++, you will be able to share source files between your various projects. managed c++, despite the c++ in the name, really is a different enough language that it will be annoying to work with if you simultaneously have to deal with iso C++.
--
Note: The native windows API is a C api, not a C++ framework. So it does not provide a rich set of classes in a coherent framework to deal with. On the other hand, while, large, it is actually quite simple to work with.
Also: Given that you are already familiar with Mac development, there is a LGPL (iirc) package called CFLite that builds on windows and that implements the C api that underlays the Objective-C Cocoa API.
If you use its abstratcions you can share a greater part of code between windows and Mac (and other platforms).
Other C++ IDE's you might want to consider:
Code::Blocks
QT Creator
both of which can be configured to use the MINGW port of GCC to windows.
you'll be better off with c++ than c# if you need more "low-level" stuff. Loading dlls (that is, libs) is simple (pragma comment lib...), as is pure HTTP transfer and communication.
So, VC++ with windows form will suffice, and it is "very c++".
You have access to all global APIs, and loading specific apis like http requires only two lines: one to include wininet header, and other lib (libs are actually "references" to dlls).
If you go the C++ Express way then you need to install Windows SDK separately, and set it up for Visual Studio to use it. And you can't use MFC.
I would however, suggest C#, because it feels like putting little toy bricks together. Easier to debug and maintain. Problem with C# is that it has so many library functions that you can not possibly know if what you want is already made to a function. But that's why we are here :-) If you feel that something you want to do should already exist then ask a question about it. One notable feature that C# lacks is zip archives (it has something similar, but not quite). For zips you can use public libraries, like SharpZipLib or DotNetZip.
If I were you, I wouldn't jump into a whole new API so quickly. Have you considered using Python on Windows? Most of the Python packages I've seen are also available for Windows, so you'll feel at home. And if you need some GUI, you can opt for wxPython, pyGTK or something similar.
For Windows specific things, you can always use ctypes. Especially if they're as simple as loading a DLL.
have you considered approaching Adobe AIR? it allows you to deploy on Mac, Linux, Windows, iOS, etc. communicating with and launching native processes has been possible since 2.0 and the the latest 2.5 SDK can target Android OS and TVs. with your experience you should be able to pick up ActionScript3 / MXML in no time.
additionally, there are a handful of free IDEs you can use with the Flex and AIR SDKs. or, if you're a student or low-income developer, you can get a free copy of Flash Builder 4 from Adobe: http://www.adobe.com/devnet-archive/flex/free/
edit: i believe deploying AIR applications on iPhone requires Flash Professional CS5, which includes the packager for iPhone options. at the same time, i've read that AIR and other cross-compilers for iOS are painfully slow, so it's perhaps best to develop natively in Objective-C for iOS.
I want to start making a little window-based program that runs on both Linux and Windows flawlessly.
It must have a GUI. What are the things I should be reading about? I'm completely in the dark regarding this.
Thank you.
If you want to leverage your C#/.NET knowledge (IronPython,...), you should go with Mono. Its IDE is called MonoDevelop and works in Linux, Mac and Windows. You can keep using WinForms or switch to Gtk#, which is a nice wrapper around gtk+.
Also, make sure you read the application portability guidelines which covers different strategies and common pitfalls.
Enjoy!
You could try Java and run the same compiled bytecode in both places. Or try C++ with Qt or wxWidgets. With C++ though you will have to compile for each platform. Another possibility is Tcl/Tk
As a C# developer, I'd suggest Java with the Swing toolkit. NetBeans helps you get started easily, like Visual Studio.
Download, install, create a new prject, and there you have it; a form in front of you to drop controls and hook up to the code just like in VS + C#, except it's cross-platform (write once, run anywhere). And the language is very similar to C# (which was actually inspired by it). There are also countless books to help you get started with Java and GUI development in it too.
If you don't like Java for some reason, and you're willing to learn/use C++ (with extensions), have a go at Qt, and the Qt SDK, which includes a form designer as well, with a really nice IDE GUI. If you know C++, Qt should be a breeze. It's also cross-platform (write once, compile anywhere).
Good luck.
If you want to utilize your C# knowledge, you might want to have a look at Mono. But there are many, many other alternatives too.
I'm trying/thinking of making CppCMS - C++ Web Framework project little bit more cross platform.
Today I can easily support Linux, OpenSolaris, FreeBSD and even Cygwin. But when it comes to Native Windows it becomes really painful:
The overview of the situation:
I'm POSIX/Linux developer and I'm barely familiar with Native Windows development tools like Visual Studio and Win32 API. However I do some work for this platform so I understand the limitations and the fact that Windows is totally different world.
This is web project that uses APIs that popular in Unix world, like: CGI, FastCGI and SCGI that implemented in most UNIX web servers; but I understand that I would not be able to use it with IIS because it does not support FastCGI over TCP/IP (only Windows pipes).
So even when it would work it would probably run only with Windows port of Apache.
I relay heavily on POSIX API:
Pref-forking allows be keep high survivability in case of crashing (not supported under windows) so this feature would be missing.
I use some file-locking facilities (but I can probably give them up without forking)
I have intensive use of native pthreads, even I can replace them with Boost.Thread
I probably would never be able to support Visual Studio (maybe 2010 with C++0x support), because I relay on C++0x decltype/auto feature or typeof/__typeof__ extension that is supported by most compilers I worked with: gcc, intel, sun studio. (To be honest: I can work without them but it makes the life much easier to framework user.
I relay heavily on autotools and I can't replace them with CMake, bjam or friends, because when it comes to support of internationalization, cross copiling, package management, they just does not give me a solution.
There are many annoying points like missing gmtime_r, or localtime_r under windows and many others that just require from me to rewrite them or replace them with 3rd part libraries.
There are still many "UNIX like" libraries that ported to Win32 like: iconv, gcrypt and some others that are barely ported like libdbi that have many limitations on windows.
Bottom line:
There is lots of non-trivial work to do, and even when it would be complete, it would probably work only with MingW tools and not "native" tools that Windows programmers are
familiar with.
So, my questions are:
Does such MingW port worth an effort? Would this help to build bigger community?
Does anybody have experience on how painful porting big projects from POSIX environment to
Win32 API is?
Would it be useful for Windows developers at all?
Edit:
It is also important for me to understand, how many of windows developers prefer to use
Open source development tools, MingW over Microsoft development solutions like VS.
Edit #2: Clearification about "native" windows solusions and IIS.
In fact, running framework with IIS is really hard problem. I explain:
The project relates to standard web server API as FastCGI or SCGI that allows to accept many requests over sinlge socket. Thus, on application side, I accept new request proceed it and returns the answer. Sometimes several threads process several requests.
Thus, implementing one or two standard protocols I open communication with any existing server: Apache, lighttpd, nginx, cherokee... or any other servers; with small exception of IIS
IIS has implementation of FastCGI, but... It supports only 1 connection per local process only that controlled by web server...
So... there is absolutely no standard way to connect my application to IIS.
Please note, I implement standard Web server API, I do not implement Neither IIS proprietary ISAPI nor Apache proprietary API, even the second is more important as for targeting UNIX world.
So, just Windows IIS Web world is just not really ready for cooperation for such project, so if anybody would use it under Windows it would use it with more open web servers.
You should base your decision on user demand. Have users ever requested using the framework on Windows? If so, did they explain why they wanted to use Windows (e.g. what additional constraints they had, what webserver they wanted to use, etc.)?
Typically, Windows users do expect that things work the Windows way. That means Visual Studio support, IIS support, MSI installer, and so on. If something still feels like being Unix, I would rather use Unix proper, instead of fighting with a half-working port.
As a windows client app developer it sort of hurts me that the development environment division currently is essentially Win32 and everything else and that they are mostly incompatible. That's why I'm preparing to move to MinGW for my personal windows app projects and to try to make them cross-platform.
I would suggest gradually moving to more cross-platform libraries like, as you suggested, refactoring pthreads to boost::thread, or going from fork() to multi-process with IPC, probably also using boost's facilities. Date/time stuff can be dealt with Boost libs as well. As for database support, there are
Microsoft compiler support is not that important I think, as MinGW provides a decent build environment with all the IDEs that support it, Eclipse CDT and Dev-C++ being among the most popular. But if you are going to make your project msvc-compatible, make sure users will be able to use Express editions of Visual Studio 2010 (as soon as thay come out) - that way no one will have to fork out for a Visual Studio 2010 (upgrade) just to use your project and there will be no problem for you to require the latest in Microsoft technology.
Most likely you won't avoid some amount of ifdefs for a code base of your project's size, but surely the effort might be worth it, if not only for gaining valuable experience and expanding the community with a few new happy and grateful members.
Your saying that you can support Cygwin quite easily reminds me that I've seen commercial Windows software that simply bundled in cygwin1.dll to support some originally-Unix code. If adding cygwin1.dll to your installer is all it takes, try it out.
I think you only have to look at the questions asked on SO to work out that MinGW users on Windows (of which I am one) are in a minority in the development community - the vast majority of Windows developers are using MS tools. Anyway, the compiler is only half (or less) of the issue - if your architecture depends on forking lots of processes, using MinGW is not going to help you. My advice is, if you really want to do cross platform development:
look at how Apache do it
consider using the Apache libraries as your base
don't use very new or compiler-specific language features
use multi-threading rather than multi-process
Does such MingW port worth an effort? Would this help to build bigger community?
I am still working myself on this issue with my own large POSIX project and my conclusion is that if you need to later interface with Microsoft products, then its worth while, however then I would only use MingW if project is medium small, if it is very large, then I would go all the way with MSDN Microsoft development tools - Huge amount of help will be available there - however it will cost
Does anybody have experience on how painful porting big projects from POSIX environment to Win32 API is?
sofar my own conversion of my POSIX project have been constantly put on hold, because of the amount of time each issue takes to handle is enormous - not finished converting yet - If I ever will be
Would it be useful for Windows developers at all?
Sure working inside the Microsoft IDE using tools from MSDN will definately decrease development time, however it will increase your dependence on Microsoft libraries - something you need to decide from beginning if that is an issue
**
Actually you could just add the necessary cygwin dlls to your projects make and then you would beable to run it in windows
I managed to make my POSIX project run when I added following dlls
cygboost_filesystem.dll
cygboost_system-mt-1_53.dll
cygboost_thread.dll
cyggcc_s-1.dll
cygstdc++-6.dll
cygwin1.dll
Probably your project will have different dependencies, however if you think conversion is not worth it, then perhaps this is a solution for you
You could also add your libs as static, then you would end up with only having to provide the last cygwin1.dll
Have a quick project I need to put together for windows that can have no external references or dependencies; the stalwarts like C are obvious but if you are a .NET developer and need to build something like this very quick what language/tool would you use?
EDIT: Ultimately I want to be able to take JUST the exe produced by the compiler and put it alone on a windows machine and have the app run.
If you're a .net developer, you could consider something like using Remotesoft's Salamander or another similar tool that compiles everything into a single executable (including the framework).
This option lets you develop in .net, but not install the .net framework on your client's systems. If you're deploying on non-MS systems, you can use the Mono's deployment tools to accomplish the same thing for free.
In general, I'd say stick to the tools and languages you know. It's easier to build an installer to install the .net framework then it is to learn a new suite of tools, libraries, etc.
You can do it for practically any language (I'm excluding the obvious C/C++)
You can bundle the .NET runtime into your .exe and write the app in C#
You can write the app in Python and bundle everything into a single .exe using a tool like py2exe. I do this regularly. One can create great-looking and powerful applications with Python and PyQt, bundle everything into a single no-dependencies executable and deploy to users w/o a need to install anything else. The executable is a few MB large (~9 with PyQt), and loads and runs quickly.
Etc.
It's more important which language / environment do you currently know well. Focus on that, because the tools do exist for anything you'd want to use.
Delphi has always been the best product for producing stand-alone .EXEs for Windows. No Microsoft product has ever come near it in that regard.
I think a good allround answer to this is Free Pascal via the Lazarus IDE.
Free Pascal applications are native and dependency-free, and a lot of platforms are supported. Too many to list here! Free Pascal itself is a free and open source compiler.
For better convenience, I strongly recommend using the Lazarus IDE. Now you even get a RAD IDE for cross-platform GUI applications (as well as console), with a sizable set of builtin features, like database support. Really a pretty lovely all-in-one, often underestimated or even unknown, platform that produces self contained, native executables. There aren't all too many of those tools if you think about it. You can even cross-compile from it, for example to compile a GUI application for Linux on Windows, no virtual machines necessary.
One day, I wish .NET Native could get this far, but it is currently far from capable and I'm not sure if Microsoft even intends to go there. Google's Go language is also nice in that it compiles to native cross-platform code, but lacks a GUI library. Python can have its code packaged into executables but it's kind of a kludge and not native code. And so on...
C/C++ would be your language but don't use any fancy libraries like MFC, MSVCRT, etc. or if you do link them statically to your executable.
"No external references" is a bit vague. Are you talking about a deployment solution for an application?
For example, you can use Tcl which supports the ability to create a single file executable that contains both the application code and a virtual filesystem that can contain any other files needed by the application. If your goal is to create a single file that can be deployed without having to install extra files, read up about "starkits" and "starpacks".
If you target a Windows Vista .NET 3.0 is preinstalled,
If you target a Windows 7 .NET 3.5 is preinstalled, if you use no other libraries than the ones included in those distributions then you app will run. Installing .NET isn't really that much work anyway, just ship with the redistributable.
Assembler. Your only dependency is the CPU
Here's a left field answer...
Tcl
combined with starkits, you can create a simple double-clickable .exe with no need for an installer.
the downside, of course, is that it'll be written in tcl.
As an added bonus, you'll be able to port your app trivially to mac or linux (or a range of other odd operating systems)
Do you consider the .NET Framework "external"? If you stick to .NET Framework and use C#, your code should run anywhere the .NET Framework of appropriate version is installed, and you'll only need to deploy your .exe and .exe.config.
It is not possible to run a .NET program without the .NET Framework. If you can't require the .NET Framework to already be installed, then you cannot use a .NET program. That's what I meant.
I've no clue what the downvotes are about, but let me try once more to clarify. The original post said:
the stalwarts like C are obvious but
if you are a .NET developer and need
to build something like this very
quick what language/tool would you
use?
The answer is that if you are a .NET developer, there is no tool or language you can use for this purpose, as every .NET program requires the .NET Framework be installed. If you need a program that is entirely independant, then don't use .NET. As others have replied, you can bundle .NET into your exe. You can also have .NET installed with your application, if you're willing to ship a .MSI file and not just your exe.
But, by definition, a .NET program cannot be independent of the .NET Framework.
I need to develop a simple Windows application with 6 or 7 forms. Its main purpose is to manage files and launch a external program.
These are my wishes, in descending importance order
Free
Be Visual, I mean, the possibility to paint forms and object in the screen.
Possibility to carry it in a USB pen-drive.
I need a light/small size language, not a very complex one. My program is going to have very few forms and its functionality is simple.
Is there any language that meet this wishes? If not, is there any commercial one?
I would use Visual C# Express if I were you.
As others have suggested, C# isn't a bad choice.
Personally I'd use wxPython. If you want a GUI to help you lay out the forms, wxDesigner is very good.
Take a look at Visual Basic Express. IMNTBHO, the learning curve for VB.Net is shallower than the C# equivalent.
Failing that (as much as it pains me to say this) take a look at MS-Access (and a runtime install for carrying it around with you). It's not free, but it's also not terribly expensive. The learning curve is even shallower than VB.Net.
You mentioned wanting your program to be portable on a USB drive, so the previous answers suggesting C# and VB.Net are good as long as all of the machines you'll be using your program on have the .Net framework installed.
If you need to run your program on systems without .Net, you'll need to look at programming environments that can either make a native .exe or can wrap scripts in an executable. Which of those is right depends on your needs and programming experience, but I'd take a look at Lazarus/Free Pascal, C++, or Python (with py2exe).
Visual Studio Express editions seems good for your requirement.
Check: http://www.microsoft.com/Express/
Another vote for Lazarus/Free Pascal. It works from stick, and generates (on Windows 32/64/CE) standalone binaries, and you have full access to the windows api and other windwos specific gadgets (COM)
I'd recommend Turbo Explorer. It's a free RAD IDE that'll generate native win32 apps in C++ or Delphi without the need for a managed framework like .NET.
It couldn't be simpler to use. Just drag and drop your components on your form, compile, and run.
I'd ordinarily push for C# or something on the .NET framework but the stipulation of running on a flash disk means you need something that compiles natively. In addition to Lazarus/FreePascal mentioned above you might also want to investigate CodeGear Delphi