Re: [firebreath-dev] Building cross platform plugins

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Richard Bateman

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Feb 4, 2013, 2:48:51 PM2/4/13
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I basically do most development on just one platform and keep as much of the code cross platform as possible.  Whenever I fix something on one platform, I sync my source control and test it on all other platforms.

On windows I use VS2010 professional.

On Mac I use Xcode

On linux I use vim. (okay, I sometimes use vim on all of them, depending on what I'm doing).

Things to remember:

1) Do not *ever* put the build/ directory in source control
2) Do not *ever* copy the build/ directory to another computer
3) You can use cmake to include files for a specific architecture and use common base classes to keep most of your files system agnostic.

There is no way that I know of to compile a mac plugin from a windows computer, or vise versa.  Linux plugins might be doable from mac or windows, but mac and windows both rely too much on features of xcode or visual studio.

For filesystem stuff, use boost::filesystem.  For most everything else, see what else boost has =] I fought against using boost for a long time, but it solves so many problems in a clean, stable, cross platform way that I always look there first now.

Richard

On Feb 4, 2013, at 09:28, Kevin Gödecke <goed...@net-studios.de> wrote:

Hello FireBreath community,

first of all I have to say that I really found it helpful and appreciate it that the whole FireBreath project is that good documented. I just started developing with C++ and the FireBreath framework, so please be patient with me with some newbie questions come up ;-)

As my intention is to develop a plugin for Mac, Linux and Windows, I was wondering whats the best way to handle the source code and compilation process for the different operating systems. The "Get started" - tutorial for Mac describes developing with XCode and also compiling with it. The output is a .plugin file which can be used to run the plugin on Mac. Is there any way to develop for Mac and Windows through one IDE like Visual Studios and get a dll and a .plugin file after compiling? There must be an easier way then setting up two different projects or what procedure do you recommend to take care of the development under different operating system?

An other questions I was facing is the implementation of operating system specific commands like opening a file or something similar. Can you point me in the right direction to do that?

Thanks in advance.

Kevin

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Kevin Gödecke

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Feb 4, 2013, 3:56:32 PM2/4/13
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Thanks for your fast and informative answer, Richard ;) Helped me a lot!

Kevin

Richard Bateman

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Apr 17, 2013, 2:31:43 PM4/17/13
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Totally agree; please feel free to put that on the website wherever you think it makes sense.

(in case you didn't realize, the website is a wiki)

Richard

Apr 17, 2013, в 11:45, smog <ing...@gmail.com> написал(а):

thx,

--- There is no way that I know of to compile a mac plugin from a windows computer, or vise versa ---

this is important information for newbies, but hard to find.
i suggest to add this to "building" section on firebreath homepage.



Dne pondělí, 4. února 2013 20:48:51 UTC+1 Richard Bateman (taxilian) napsal(a):

John Tan

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Apr 17, 2013, 9:23:38 PM4/17/13
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Well,  not entirely true if you're gungho enough to create a VM to load Mac OS on your windows. I've tried it and it's really unwieldy to do any serious coding. If you're talking about running XCode natively on Windows, then, yeah, there's no way to do that...
 
On Thursday, 18 April 2013 01:45:32 UTC+8, smog wrote:
thx,

--- There is no way that I know of to compile a mac plugin from a windows computer, or vise versa ---

this is important information for newbies, but hard to find.
i suggest to add this to "building" section on firebreath homepage.



Dne pondělí, 4. února 2013 20:48:51 UTC+1 Richard Bateman (taxilian) napsal(a):

Neil Griffiths

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Apr 17, 2013, 9:34:36 PM4/17/13
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But it IS (or should be) possible on Linux.

Not that I've tried to build a plugin on Linux but I've certainly cross-compiled programs for the Mac before!

Taran Rampersad

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Apr 17, 2013, 10:02:32 PM4/17/13
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That would be an interesting experiment, the VM... but at the binary/exe level you could be dealing with processor differences that the emulator kluges. The only real way to assure hardware compatibility is to compile on the hardware, IMHO.

That said, being proven wrong would be stellar. :-)

John Tan wrote:
Well,  not entirely true if you're gungho enough to create a VM to load Mac OS on your windows. I've tried it and it's really unwieldy to do any serious coding. If you're talking about running XCode natively on Windows, then, yeah, there's no way to do that...
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John Dexter

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Apr 18, 2013, 3:46:18 AM4/18/13
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Neil wouldn't the types of things that can be cross-compiled be quite limited i.e. you can't use any Mac Frameworks, which you'd need for many plugins?

In my view the best way to do multiple OS development on a single PC is to get a Mac and use Bootcamp or Parallels/VirtualBox to run the other OS :)

Neil Griffiths

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Apr 18, 2013, 1:25:08 PM4/18/13
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You can absolutely use Mac Frameworks. The only question is how to obtain them in the first place!

But I agree with you about the easiest way to do multiple OS development. There's a reason I have multiple Macs around me right now. :)
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