I'm not entirely sure about mac or anything, but what I want to do, is compile my objective-c program, for a mac, but compile it on a windows computer.
Is it possible to do this?
I have already successfully compiled an Objective-C program for windows on windows.
Compilation isn't the problem. Linking is.
You'll need something that can spit mach-o executables.
I'm not aware of an app that can specifically target OS X, but the existence of multiple tool chains that can produce iOS binaries on Windows. They typically require a Mac to do the signing for iOS, but that step is optional when targeting OS X.
Related
When I create a new OS X application project, I noticed many target options those confuse me quite a lot:
(1) The top-left setting of Xcode window:
(2) The "Base SDK":
(3) "Deployment Target":
(4) Architectures:
Here comes my questions:
For (2) and (3), I think it was clearer to understand. These are what I comprehend:
(2) This identifies what I develop with.
(3) This identifies what OS version my application will be used on.
Please tell me whether I am right...
But I could not understand (1). I just know that if I select 32-bit here, I could not use ARC.
Neither with (4), what are they? Are they represent the bit-width of the CPU? What was the difference between (1) and (4)?
I'll explain your items out of order.
The Base SDK
This defines the largest set of APIs you can use. You can use anything that existed as of the version number identified here. For example, if you use the 10.8 SDK, you can use -[NSColor CGColor] (introduced in 10.8), but not -[NSData base64EncodedDataWithOptions:] (first public in 10.9).
(Of course, you can also use anything older than that version.)
Accordingly, the SDK version is also known as the “max[imum] allowed” version in the Availability macros.
The SDK version also sometimes becomes important when Apple changes the behavior of an API. When they do that, they sometimes keep the old behavior around for applications linked with older SDKs. This is called an “on-or-after check”, as in “checks whether you're on 10.8 [SDK] or later”. (The concept and term pre-date Xcode having SDKs for each OS version. It used to just go by whatever OS you were running Xcode and building on.)
The Deployment Target
This is the minimum OS version you require. If something was removed in a prior version (rare, but it happens), you can't use it.
This tends to affect link-time and run-time things more than compile-time things. For example, ARC won't work if your deployment target is 10.5 or earlier.
Accordingly, the Deployment Target is also known as the “min[imum] required” version in the Availability macros.
The Info.plist can also specify a minimum OS version. Nowadays, this is set by default and it's set by macro expansion to the Deployment Target.
The Architectures build setting
Different CPUs have different architectures. Essentially, they fit into broad categories, such as:
PowerPC 32-bit (ppc)
PowerPC 64-bit (ppc64)
Intel 32-bit (i386)
Intel 64-bit (x86_64)
ARM 32-bit
ARM 64-bit
(PowerPC architectures aren't supported anymore. You can add them to the Architectures list, as ppc and ppc64, but Xcode will just ignore them.)
Macs nowadays have Intel processors. Almost all Intel Macs have 64-bit processors. You only need to worry about 32-bit Intel if you want to support Macs all the way back to 2006. That's probably more hassle than it's worth.
iOS devices run ARM processors, and most are still 32-bit. The A7 (iPhone 5S, iPad Air, iPad Mini with Retina Display) is 64-bit. But, if you run on an iOS Simulator, it's running on your Mac (it's a Simulator, not an emulator), so it'll target an Intel architecture (formerly always i386, but probably can now be x86_64 if needed).
The “top-left setting of Xcode window”
This is the build scheme and run destination. (Yes, it's two separate things in one pop-up menu. Actually, it's two separate pop-up menus in one control. Try it.)
“My Mac 64-bit” is the run destination. You'll be running the 64-bit version of your app on your Mac, not in an iOS Simulator or on an iOS device. Your choice for a Mac app is merely which architecture you want to run, and they should behave the same (this is, obviously, something you sometimes need to test).
iOS apps have more choices here. Some apps are iPhone-only, some are iPad-only, some are universal, and some may be set to build for both 32-bit and 64-bit architectures. You'll have a Simulator offered for each combination of form factor and architecture (e.g., iPhone Simulator 64-bit) you can run on. You'll also have the option to run your app on any iOS device that's connected and enabled for development (you get this prompt when you plug in the device in Xcode's sight).
TL;DR
Deployment Target is the lowest OS version your app will run on.
Base SDK is the highest OS version you can use stuff from. If it didn't exist yet, it doesn't exist at all for you.
Architectures are the set of hardware your app will run on.
Run Destination is the hardware you're going to run it on from within Xcode.
Just like with most OSes these days you can develop either a 32bit or a 64bit application. The "bitness" refers mostly to how memory addresses are structured (either using 32bit allowing so at most 4GB to address or 64bit (computation left as an exercise to the reader)). However the choosen architecture usually has more implications (like the missing ARC support for 32bit apps) but also how wide CPU registers are, how much memory a structure uses in RAM etc.
OS X also supports socalled fat binaryies that is, a bundle containing both 32bit and 64bit variants of your application. This is however only needed if you normally prefer to run 64bit code, but want your app also to run on OS versions that only support 32bit.
In XCode you can define for what architecture to build your project, either 32bit only, 64bit only or a fat bundle. In the project settings you can set what is allowed and in the top bar in XCode you can quickly switch between the allowed architectures (your questions 1 and 4).
The base SDK determines what you want to use to compile your application. If you select for instance 10.7 you cannot use new APIs that were introduced in 10.8 or 10.9 (which might perfectly be ok if you want your application to run on earlier OS versions only). However if you want to dynamically use new features if they are availble you'd select the latest OS as base SDK and check in code what OS you are running on and only use new features if they are available. It is totally ok to compile an application with access to new features and run it on older systems if you don't use the new APIs there (they are late-bound and hence only crash when you access them the first time and they are not available).
The deployment target determines the minimum OS version your application needs to run properly. This is a runtime check done when the application is started. The OS will refuse to start an application that is made for a later version.
I'm trying to create a universal Automator action for Mac OS X 10.5 & above. Under architectures I have set "i386 ppc" and when compiled, Finder sees the binary as "Universal". Automator however says that the action is not universal and won't run it. (when hitting "Build & Go" in Xcode it works)
Am I missing something here?
If your Mac is an Intel Mac, check if Automator is running as 64 bit process (Activity Monitor can tell you that). If it is, it may not be able to load a binary that contains 32 bit only. In that case your binary must have been compiled for three architectures, i386, ppc and x86_64. Note, however, that in SDK 10.5, Cocoa was not available for x86_64, so you will have to use SDK 10.6 for the x86_64 variant, while keeping SDK 10.5 for the i386 and ppc variants. That is easily possible, though, you can create a custom build setting, named SDKROOT_x86_64, which will override the default SDK setting (named SDKROOT), but only when building for the architecture x86_64. The value should be the absolute path to the SDK (I'm not sure if the shortcuts Apple usually uses for this setting will also work for a custom override).
Seems like there wouldn't be, but it would help us out if there was. I wish to pull the source down to a windows server and compile it and have it be the same as if I had pulled the source code down to a mac machine and used xcode on it. Any Ideas?
Reasons: Release Engineering and IT are much more familiar and comfortable on windows, so it would be easier on us, and LaunchD sucks.
Your original question had less detail... I think you are creating more problems than you are solving buy not using a Mac. Is it really that hard to learn to compile under Xcode or type make in the console?
Anyway...
Apple uses a modified version of the GCC C/C++/Objective C compiler with a proprietary runtime library... You could develop using a port of this code to Windows. See GNUStep.Org. This is not binary compatible though but it isn't impossible that you could rebuild it to cross compile to something that was Mac OS X compatible.
Another idea would be to develop using c# .NET and then move the binaries across to Mac OS X and run the binaries using Mono....
None of these options are robust enough to allow you to do this blind without a Macintosh to test and get up and running in the first place.
You can compile cross app with Cocotron but only on Mac
Why do you need launchd? cron works just as well on Mac as it does on Linux, just have a cronjob that does (Extremely simplified version ahead):
cd /my/source/dir
git pull # You are using Git, right?
xcodebuild MyCoolProject.xcodeproj
cp -r build/MyApp.app /the/distribution/folder
I have build an universal binary with xcode 2.4 using sdk10.4 on Mac 10.4.4, when I'm trying to invoke the application in 10.3.9 PPC machine,the application is not getting invoked, saying it is not able to find the libcurl.3.dylib.
Since 10.3.9 has only libcurl.2.dylib the application is not getting invoked?
But according to Universal binary definition, the universal binary build using 10.4sdk should run in the MAC OS prior to 10.4?
What am I missing? Y my application is trying to load libcurl.3.dylib instead of libcurl.2.dylib?
(FYI: In the xcode.proj I'm linking libcurl.dylib, which is the alias name for libcurl
Sorry, but "Universal" means the binary can run on different processors (x86, PowerPC), but it does not mean it can run on earlier versions of Mac OS. This article gives details on building a "Universal" binary that can also run on Mac OS X 10.3.
I'm doing a little app that I want to distribute in different platforms, at least the 3 major ones.
Is it possible to use only Windows has the host OS to compile the binaries for Linux, Mac OS X and other supported platforms without resorting to virtual machines?
Or should I ask around in some community to help me compile on, well OS X, actually, since I can virtualize a Linux machine quite easy?
It is possible to compile from one plateform to another, it is called cross-compilation. You will find extensive informations at http://www.stack.nl/~marcov/buildfaq.pdf
The buildfaq above contains sample cross-compilation :
from Windows to Linux,
from FreeBSD to AMD64 Linux
The FPC download page contains :
the i386-win32 to x86_64-win64 cross-compiler
the i386-win32 to arm-wince cross-compiler
The FPC mailing lists are at http://www.freepascal.org/maillist.var
You will find more informations about FPC at http://www.freepascal.org/moreinfo.var
(I'm the author of the buildfaq document above)
There are some limitations. You can't target x86 from powerpc, because powerpc misses an "extended" type. But in generally it works.
I have generated a complete Lazarus for OS X on Windows.
I would virtualize Linux, as even if you can cross-compile, it means you're not testing the binaries on their native platforms. OS X is a trickier problem.
It is not possible to compile from one platform to another. We have a Mac and use FPC quite often. If you need some help with compiling on a mac, drop me a message.