I have seen a lot of C/C++ Libraries and Gui Toolkits. Among them there are some like GTK+ , Qt , Swing etc. which claim to be platform-independent. While some , like WxWidgets, SWT etc. which claim to be cross-platform. At first I thought it to be just a change in wording, but the terms have been used with such consistency that I have started to wonder. What is the difference?
Cross-platform only implies that you support multiple platforms. It usually means Linux, Mac, and Windows. Platform-independent implies that you support any platform that your language supports- i.e., you depend on no behaviour that is not specified in the language specification. However that's just my personal opinion and most uses just take both of them to mean "multiple platforms", usually "Windows and ...".
For what its worth, this is what Wikipedia has to say on the matter:
In order for software to be considered cross-platform, it must be able to function on more than one computer architecture or operating system.
Software that is platform independent does not rely on any special features of any single platform, or, if it does, handles those special features such that it can deal with multiple platforms
"Platform-independent" would usually be a program written in a high-level language that doesn't need recompiling or adjusting for another platform and can just run "as is" (Java, most Perl scripts, etc.) as long as the particular platform implements the language runtime. This is possible when there are layers below the program that deal with different platforms (the VM or the interpreter).
"Cross-platform" implies that the program can be compiled/adjusted for multiple platforms, but not for any platform. Think of #ifdef's in C and C++ code.
Cross-platform means your program can work on different platforms example Windows, Linux, and Mac.
Platform Independent means your code is Write once Run Anywhere i.e. you don't need to change your code to run on different platforms
All platform independent programs are cross-platform but vice versa not true
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Background: I want to develop a component therefore building a class library.
This component should be usable with many higher-order languages such as C, C#, C++, VB, Java, Haskell, Ruby, Erlang, ...
I do not want to exclude any users which are not using my development language.
Are there principles or tools which supports my project?
I searched a little bit and found Haxle for compiling into different languages, but it supports very few of them.
I would even develop parallel in all n languages to be supported, but if I want to change or fix something I have to maintain all other n-1 and the code is possibly distributed...
This is not what I know about clean code design and maintainability. So how to manage edits on code for the different languages?
What is the proper way to solve this? I am surely not the first one which want to build a library for multiple languages.
I want to develop this library (in this case for complexity reduction) in one target language but this time for multiple platforms (Unix, Win, Mac ...).
How to manage this? In fact there will be appreciated about 90% of code which is platform independent and 10% which differs for every OS.
What is the best way to control the changes in the platform dependent code? (The independent is easy ...)
What if I change so things in the part which uses Unix dependent code, then I have to trail all other platform and the code is possibly distributed.
I think #IFDEF is no option ...
Are there any experiences or hints?
I would be delighted if there are existing solutions to these problems, which are quite similar.
What you want is only possible if you provide interfaces for every language you want to support. Some kind of wrapper which transforms between the client language and ypu library.
This is possible but not practical in most cases for standalone libraries.
Take a look at webservices or or message orientad middleware. In this case your application will be provided within a special container which itself provides interface mechanism e.g.
SOAP, XML-RPC to call your application.
For 1), I would use an interface that all these languages can use. A common approach is something based on networking/TCP, like protobuffer, REST, SOAP. Many languages support these in their standard libraries, and interfaces designed with that are normally language agnostic.
There are basically two options - you could develop a network server or you could develop a JVM-based library which could be shared between some of the JVM languages like JRuby or Jython.
Update from #millimoose: you could also develop your library in C and create bindings for all other languages.
For multi-language:
I thought about TCP/middleware/webservices/REST/ which seems to be the recommended proceeding.
But I think it's all to much at runtime for only using a library.
Also the functionality is a little bit time-critical and so direct procedure calls are more fitting (instead of networking even on localhost). And the library user hasn't to construct an access component only to use the library functions.
So I think the way to go seems to be developing the library in a core language which is widely supported (C/C++, ...) and provide wrapper interfaces for the different target languages.
For multi-platform (mono-language):
No real answer has been provided also not in my mind.
Of course I could simply use Java (what I am familiar with) but what about other languages?
I am surely not the first one having this/these problem(s) ...
I am looking for the best scripting language interpreter for cross compiling to an ARM processor. Here are the requirements for "best":
Its small. Ideally, I'd like to be able to decide which parts of the language and "standard" libraries that are supported. (For instance: file system, nah don't want that. Floating point math, nope don't want that either.)
Its easy. Ideally, I'd like some documentation/tutorial/examples on how to do the cross-compile.
The goal: I'm writing a small, simple web server in an embedded ARM device and I'd like to do some string processing easily. The code is currently written in C.
I'd like the server and system-level code to be in C. I'd like to write the web "application" in a scripting language. The language features I'm most interested in are:
built-in string support
built-in regex support
built-in map support (i.e key-value pairs object)
I'd like the "best" to come from the following list: Perl, Python, Ruby, Lua. But I would be open to other language suggestions.
I would consider Lua.
Lua is distributed in a small package and builds out-of-the-box in all
platforms that have an ANSI/ISO C compiler. Lua runs on all flavors of
Unix and Windows, and also on mobile devices (such as handheld
computers and cell phones that use BREW, Symbian, Pocket PC, etc.) and
embedded microprocessors (such as ARM and Rabbit) for applications
like Lego MindStorms.
Pattern matching in Lua
Lua tables should meet your map requirement.
Lua string manipulation
Lua compared to Python
(Note: I really like Python and for general purpose scriping would prefer it to Lua but in terms of portability and performance on embedded processors I'd lean towards Lua).
We have a business logic that works with the file systems on OS that we want to implement on both Linux and Windows platforms. The language we have selected is Python for Linux and C# for Windows. GUI is not a priority for now. We were looking for ways to abstract the business logic in a way that we dont have to repeat the business logic (ofcourse I understand since it is related to file system, some code will differ from platform to platform).
Any ideas on how to implement it? Is C/C++ the only option. We dont want to use Java.
Thanks,
Pranz
yea, pick a common language for the logic first. Punting down in to C/C++ pretty much eliminates any of the real values to development that the Python and C# languages provide. Done write, MOST of your logic will be "Business Logic" with the rest glue to external services (i.e. databases, etc.).
So, you should pick a portable environment from the get go. Dropping down to C/C++ and linking it in is a viable alternative, but most likely not worth the time.
Mono is an option you'll probably want to look into.
Quote from the site for easy explanation:
Mono is a software platform designed to allow developers to easily create cross platform applications. Sponsored by Novell, Mono is an open source implementation of Microsoft's .NET Framework based on the ECMA standards for C# and the Common Language Runtime. A growing family of solutions and an active and enthusiastic contributing community is helping position Mono to become the leading choice for development of Linux applications.
Either use Mono or Python.
Mono allows you to run C# .NET code on both platforms. Python can be executed on both platforms already.
Qt has cross-platform libraries for all sorts of things, including UI and file system. It does, however, use C++.
I just caught one of Google's commercials for Chrome where at the end they mention that it runs on Linux, Mac, and PC. So I started wondering how they are able to develop a program that can run on multiple platforms like that? I have experience with Java, and .Net but only on a windows machine. Java is by design portable, but I wouldn't think Google is using Java for something like Chrome where performance is such a concern.
I understand that each version is going to have some platform specific code, such as for the UI. But there must also be some central code that is reused across each platform. What language is this written in?
Here is an entire article about the development of Chrome. It's mostly written in C++.
Chrome is written in C++, so they will have a significant amount of platform-specific code for each OS. They most likely maintain a separate branch for each OS.
Any reasonably standardized and popular language will do, because the goal is to compile it on all platforms, not create one binary that will work on Windows, MacOSX, Linux, and z/OS. C and C++ are popular choices, because they'll work readily with pretty much anything. Java is a good choice, because it runs on pretty much everything. For applications with low performance requirements, Perl and Python are good.
The important point is to separate out what is platform-dependent from what isn't, since (except in the case of Java or scripting languages) it will probably be necessary to rewrite platform-specific stuff for each platform, and not necessarily in the same language. MacOSX is best programmed in Objective-C, and that's true for no other popular platform.
The programs are supposed to be portable in source level, not binary level. So you only need to compile it for different platforms, not necessary to make one universal binary. In fact, most languages are supported in all modern platforms including UNIX/Windows/Mac, so you can choose from almost all modern lanagues, which C/C++ is prefered by many people. BTW, C++ is the language of Chrome.
Scripting languages like Python/Perl are also good choices. One more thing, Java can be faster than you think - see Eclipse. Even without JNI Technology, Java is still good enough for most applications like JDownloader.
Google had to build different distributions for each OS (ie compiled for each platform as Francis's answer explains) - in fact the Mac OS version only recently became available - the Windows version has been around much longer.
Google Apps are 'thin applications' - the grunt-work is done on their servers.
The Apps are portable in the sense that the front-end is put together using HTML, CSS and Javascript - which are standard (in theory at least) across all browsers.
Google put a lot of effort into building Chrome's Javascript engine to be performant - to ensure any client-side logic is run quickly.
A project is looming whereby some code that I will be writing may be deployed on any hardware that potential clients happen to have. Its a business application that will be running 24/7 so I envisage that most of the host machines will be server type boxes but smaller clients might, for example, just have a simple PC.
A few more details about the code I will be writing:
There will be no GUI.
It will need to communicate with another bespoke 'black box' device over an Ethernet network.
It will need to communicate with a MySQL database somewhere on the network.
I don't have any performance concerns as a) the number of communications with the black box will be small, around 1 per second, and the amount of data exchanged will be tiny (around 1K each time), b) the number of read/writes with the database will be small, around 5 per minute, and again the amount of data exchanged will be tiny and c) the processing that needs to be performed is fairly simplistic.
Nothing I'm doing is very 'close to the metal' so I don't want to use languages that are too low level. Ease of development and ease of deployment are my main priorities.
I'm not expecting there to be a perfect solution so I can live with things like, for example, having to have slightly different configuration files for Windows machines than for Linux boxes etc. I would like to avoid having to compile the software for each host machine if possible though.
I would value your thoughts as to which development language you think is most suitable.
Cheers,
Jim
I'd go with a decent scripting language such as Python, Perl or Ruby personally. All of those have decent library support, can communicate easily with both local and remote MySQL databases and are pretty platform independent.
The first thing we need to know is what language skills you already have? This is likely to be a fairly big determiner of what choice you would ideally make.
If I was doing this I'd suggest Java for a couple of reasons:
It will run almost anywhere and meet the requirements you've outlined.
Its not an esoteric language so there will be plenty of developers.
I already know how to program in it!
Probably the most extensive library ecosystem of any of the development platforms.
Also note that you could write it in another language on the JVM if your more comfortable with Ruby or Python.
Sounds like Perl or Python would fit the bill perfectly. Which one you choose would depend on the expertise of the people building and supporting the system.
On the subject of scripting languages versus Java, I have been disappointed with developing command line tools using Java. You can't directly execute them, you have to (1) compile them and (2) write a shell script to execute the jar file, this script may differ between platforms. I recommend Python because it runs anywhere and it's got a great SQL library, mysql-python. The library is ready to use on Windows and Linux. Python also has a lot less boilerplate, you'll write fewer lines of code to do the same thing.
EDIT: when I talked about JARs being executable or not, I was talking about whether they are directly executable be the OS. You can, of course, double click on them to run them if your file manager is set up to do so. But when you're in a terminal window and you want to run a java program, you have to "java -jar myapp.jar" instead of the usual "./myapp.jar". In Python one just runs "./myapp.py" and doesn't have to worry about compiling or class paths.
If all platforms are standard PCs (or at least run Linux), then Python should be considered. You can compile it yourself if no package exists for your version. Also, you can strip the standard library easily from things that aren't available and which you don't need (sound support, for example).
Python doesn't need lots of resources, it's easy to learn and read.
If you know Perl, you can try that. If you don't use Perl on a daily basis, then don't. The Perl syntax is hard to remember and after a week, you'll wonder what the code did, even if you wrote it yourself.
Perl may be of help to you as it is available for many platforms and you can get almost any functionality by simply installing modules from CPAN.
Python or Java. They both are easy to deploy on both the server environments and the desktop environments you mention - i.e., Linux/Solaris and Windows.
Perl is also a nice choice, but it depends on how well you know Perl, how well other people that will maintain your code know Perl, and number of desktop users that are savvy enough to handle an install of the Windows Perl version(s).
As Java supports Python via Jython, I'd go with a JVM requirement myself, but I'd personally go with a Java application all the way for such a system you describe.
I would say use C or C++. They are platform independant, though you will have to compile for each platform.
Or use Java. That runs in a Virtual Machine so is truely cross platform and not a slow level as C.