Background: I work in a company with many preferences. We currently use makefiles for our complex build with the developer's choice of IDE (or even VIM) for editing source files.
I'm looking at CMake to clean up our un-tame-able gnu make build system. I like the integration with VS Code, but I couldn't possibly manage to dictate the IDE to many of our more prickly DSP engineers and their preferred editing environment (which I totally understand; I'm a bit of Visual Studio guy, myself).
Anyways, is the cmake-kits.json method of specifying kits or toolchains/targets/etc. the "right" way to do it? Or is that just for VS Code.
If it's just for VS Code, what's the proper CMake-y way to put in new toolchains (we do cross compiling using non-gnu tools for 3 different processors) that would work in VSCode, or eclipse, or from the command line.
Kits are part of the CMake extension for VS Code. You want to read cmake-toolchains(7). A kit is something like setting CC and CXX in the environment so CMake knows which compiler to use for Makefile and Ninja generators. It is different for the other generators as the IDE can control which exact compiler is used and you tell CMake which toolset to use and it generates the project accordingly. FYI, kits don't handle having to write your own toolchain file for cross compilers.
You can use a toolchain file for cross compiling. This can be simple to hard depending on the compiler and how well it acts like a gcc cross compiler. If it's really different a toolchain file isn't quite enough as you then need to update the platform items to get it all working. Since this gets into the area of being CMake implementation dependent it's not that well documented. But there is help at https://discourse.cmake.org/.
You could just use Ninja as the build tool. Then you setup your toolchain file. After your original run on CMake to create the Ninja project files, you can just run Ninja to build the software.
Then it's easy to set your IDE to just call Ninja to build the software.
Personally, I don't like the CMake integration in VS Code (it's just an add-on). It's always been too buggy for me to want to use it. But it was good for pulling the information out of the build to get the cpp-tools setup correctly. As for project files for Eclipse CDT4 - Ninja I've never personally used them.
I have begun to use GTK(2), and I find that the workings of the library to be very good, but the documentation sucks.
I want to upgrade to GTK3, but it seems I need to install something called packman. That is a difficult philosophical step for me. Why can't I simply download a zip file(s) somewhere?
The documentation uses a lot of words without saying much, and the downloads want you to download stuff OTHER then gtk in order to get gtk. Why don't they simply have a GTK package and let me decide if I need all the other stuff.
Also, I have been reading on forums, even if I do the packman stuff, it still isn't enough for C::B.
Anyway, that is mostly a rant, what I'd really like is a suggestion to an alternative to GTK+.
Here are some of my requirements...
#1, It must NOT be an interpreter. Using Code::Blocks and C, I get an exe file and I'd like to continue that way.
#2 It must be programmable using C. I'd really like to stick wiith C::B, but I guess in a pinch I can use Eclipse (although that is another nightmare I won't get into here.)
#3 GTK requires a bunch of DLL's to be shipped along with the exe file. It would be ideal if the entire target could be included in the single exe without having to rely on external dll's or .net framework or other external stuff.
Any suggestions woule be apreaciated.
Thanks, Mark.
You best bet is to give a look at https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_widget_toolkits#High-level_widget_toolkits
If you wan to stick to C and not C++, then Qt is out.
The other that stands out is EFL. I've never used it myself, but it has good reputation and probably your best bet if you want to quit GTK+ and stick to C. However I don't know how easy it is to use it on Windows.
Now about GTK+:
Also, I have been reading on forums, even if I do the packman stuff, it still isn't enough for C::B.
There are people here that use GTK+ with Code::Blocks, so I don't get what kind of problem you're referring to.
Then your other problems:
The documentation uses a lot of words without saying much
Examples?
the downloads want you to download stuff OTHER then gtk in order to get gtk
What you don't get is that GTK+ is more that just the libgtk library. It has dependencies on a lot of other libraries, like glib, cairo, pango, etc. In the past there used to be a bundle or installer to have that installed on Windows, but people would mess up on setting the environment up based on their needs and give up. As the GTK+ manpower for the Windows platform is limited, the GTK+ team delegated the distribution of the GTK+ binaries to the MSYS2 project.
MSYS2 is a popular project that provides a lot of open source software already built for Windows, and solves the problem of building and installing dependencies by hand for the user. This step is made to make installation simpler, not harder. In a handful of commands you have GTK+ and all its dependencies installed for your platform, and can start coding your app. Another command and you have python and the python GTK+ bindings installed and can get started. Want to depend on another popular library? Chances are MSYS already provides it.
Windows has been known for decades to be bad on dependency management. If package management wasn't a a pain point on Windows, then stuff like chocolatey or conan wouldn't exist.
Your philosophical reluctance is merely that: philosophical. Sure GTK+ on Windows isn't perfect. With MSYS2 you will get packages built with gcc so the debug symbols are not compatible with the Visual Studio debugger and you will need to use gdb instead. But on your other question you say you use gcc and loathe Visual Studio, so this should not be a blocker to you.
GTK requires a bunch of DLL's to be shipped along with the exe file. It would be ideal if the entire target could be included in the single exe without having to rely on external dll's or .net framework or other external stuff.
This is not possible for the moment as static compilation of GTK+ isn't supported. The redistribution of an app, however, isn't as easy as I'd like it to be. The best way on Windows to redistribute your app while using MSYS2 is to create a pacman package for your app, listing its dependencies, then call pacman to install your app on an empty directory and tell it to install all your dependencies there too. The result will be a directory that you can redistribute, with a self-contained installation of your app and all its dependencies, GTK+ included.
I have installed the latest version of Eclipse on my Windows 7 64-bit machine and the mingw compiler. In setting up a Hello World project, all goes well until I am asked for the Cross Settings what the Prefix is and the Path. The Path is obvious, it's the path to the compiler. However, I haven't the slightest idea what the Prefix is and Googling for much of the day hasn't enlightened me other than finding that a lot of other people have asked the question. Unfortunately the answers I've found appear to be for specific hardware. All I want to do is to produce an executable that will run on a Windows 32 bit or 64 bit machine.
So, what is the Prefix and how do I find what it should be?
What is probably happening here is that CDT is not locating your MingW or GCC installations.
simple - but unlikely reason - covering bases
There can be many reasons, from the simple - but unlikely at this point:
You don't have mingw installed
You don't have GCC installed
This can be tested easily by starting a shell and running gcc --version.
CDT heuristic not working
To more complicated reasons relating to your installation not being detected because the heuristic in CDT did not work on your machine. To find the correct settings, CDT will do:
Check $MINGW_HOME/bin for existence
Check <Eclipse install location>/mingw/bin for existence
Look for mingw32-gcc.exe or x86_64-w64-mingw32-gcc.exe on the PATH
Check C:\MinGW for existence
If CDT cannot find any of the above, you may lead to the situation you are in.
So, how to fix it!
Option 1
Start Eclipse from within a mingw set up shell. i.e. the one you can successfully run gcc --version from. That way Eclipse will inherit an environment that can launch GCC successfully.
Option 2
Set your environment up so that MINGW_HOME is properly defined. You can do this at the system level or within the build settings in Eclipse CDT. For example, on my machine in the build settings for the project (Right-click on the project, choose Properties, then choose C/C++ -> Environment) I have set:
MINGW_HOME to C:\MinGW
MSYS_HOME to C:\MinGW\msys\1.0
PATH to ${MINGW_HOME}\bin;${MSYS_HOME}\bin;<my normal path>
and this allows Eclipse to launch gcc as part of the build process.
NOTE The above setting were done automatically on my machine because mingw was correctly located by the heuristic.
Here is a screenshot of the build settings if it helps:
Prefix: Under the hood
To try and answer part of your original question about what Prefix is, I provide the below information. It is unlikely to be particularly helpf
Prefix, in GCC parlance, refers to the directory under which all the related GCC files are placed. With different prefixes you can have multiple GCC installed on your machine.
From the GCC FAQ:
It may be desirable to install multiple versions of the compiler on
the same system. This can be done by using different prefix paths at
configure time and a few symlinks.
The concept comes from autotools in general. Autotools is the standard GNU make system (where you do ./configure && make - simplified). The prefix is the command line option to the configure stage (--prefix) to specify where to install the tool to. GCC above uses the --prefix to allow multiple GCCs on your system.
If you really want to know more about this, read the autobook. The section on configuring covers --prefix:
‘--prefix=prefix’
The –prefix option is one of the most frequently
used. If generated ‘Makefile’s choose to observe the argument you pass
with this option, it is possible to entirely relocate the
architecture-independent portion of a package when it is installed.
For example, when installing a package like Emacs, the following
command line will cause the Emacs Lisp files to be installed in
‘/opt/gnu/share’:
$ ./configure --prefix=/opt/gnu
It is important to stress that this behavior is dependent on the generated files making use of this
information. For developers writing these files, Automake simplifies
this process a great deal. Automake is introduced in Introducing GNU
Automake.
Additionally, Mingw takes advantage of all this prefix options. Read more about that on mingw's site. But the short of it is that the main prefix for mingw is /mingw.
Since Apple have stopped distributing gfortran with Xcode, how should I compile architecture independent Fortran code? I have Mac OS X Mountain Lion (10.8), and XCode 4.4 installed, with the Command Line Tools package installed.
Apple's Native Compilers
As far as I can tell, the Xcode C / C++ / ObjC compilers use a fork of the GNU compiler collection, with llvm as a backend; the latter I figure enables compiling and optimising "universal" binaries, for both Intel and PPC architectures.
3rd party binary Fortran compilers
HPC
I've only found a single website that distributes a binary version of gfortran specifically for Mountain Lion: the HPC website. However, I failed to get this to compile SciPy, and later saw in SciPy's README that it is "known to generate buggy scipy binaries".
CRAN/R
SciPy's recommended (free) Fortran compiler is the one on CRAN's R server, but this has not been updated for Mountain Lion yet. They provide instructions and a script for Building a Universal Compiler, but, again, this hasn't been updated for Mountain Lion yet..
G95
The G95 project hasn't had an update since 2010, so I didn't try it.. Anyone tried this on Mountain Lion?
MacPorts
I guess this will be the easiest way to get gfortran installed, but port search gfortran comes up with nothing, and I've not had any joy with MacPorts in the past (no offence to MacPorts; it's looks like a very active project, but I've been spoilt with Linux package managers, my favourite manager being aptitude) so on Mac OS X I've compiled software and libraries from source code in the past. Never been a problem 'til now...
Building a Fortran compiler
Having dug around on the internet a lot in the last couple of days, I've found other Fortran compilers, but I've failed to get any to cross-compile universal binaries, or to compile SciPy.
GCC - The Gnu Compiler Collection
I compiled the entire GCC collection (v4.6.3), including autotools, automake, libtool and m4 - like the GCC wiki and this blog describe - but the resulting compilers didn't compile universal binaries, probably because LLVM wasn't used as a backend.
DragonEgg
DragonEgg is a "gcc plugin that replaces GCC's optimisers and code-generators ... with LLVM". This looks interesting, but I don't know how I could use it to compile 'llvm-gfortran-4.x'. Can this be done?
Compatibility
Libraries
The compiler that comes with Xcode is (a fork of?) GCC v4.2. But GCC's current release and development branches are versions 4.6 and 4.7, respectively. Apparently, a GNU license change, or something, stopped Apple from updating to more modern versions of GCC. So, if I was to build dynamic libraries made with GCC's gfortran v4.6, could they then be linked with C code compiled by Xcode's native compiler? At a minimum, I figure resulting Mach-O binaries need both x86_64 and i386 code paths. Do GCC provide backwards compatibility with Apple's (forks of?) GCC? I know gfortran has the -ff2c flag, but is this stable across versions?
Compile flags
The GCC Fortran compiler I built from source didn't support the use of the -arch compile flag. I had been including the flags -arch x86_64 -arch i386 in both CFLAGS and FFLAGS environment variables on earlier OSX versions (Snow Leopard to Lion). Python's distutils, and probably other OSX compilers, expect these flags to work, when configured to build apps or frameworks, using Xcode's universal SDK.
In case you're wondering what compile flags I use, I've uploaded the script I use to pastebin, which I source before I compile anything, using: source ~/.bash_devenv.
The Ideal OSX Fortran Compiler
Create ppc and intel (32 and 64bit) universal binaries, specified by using the -arch flags.
Makes binaries compatible with XCode's linker.
Compiles SciPy, giving no errors (compatible with numpy's distutils and f2py).
I don't use Xcode so much, but integration with it would surely benefit other users. Even Intel are still having problems integrating ifort into Xcode 4.4, so this is not something I expect to work..
If you read all the above, then thank you! You can probably tell that I'm not averse to building my own Fortran compiler from source, but is it even possible? Have I missed something? A configure flag maybe? And if such a compiler is not available yet, then why not?!
(Update:) Apple's GCC
Apple provide the source code for their patched version of GCC, at opensource.apple.com. This actually includes the source code for gfortran, but what do you know - it doesn't compile (easily). I'm in the process of writing a build script to get this to work. Unfortunately, I've had to apply a couple of patches, and learn about "the Apple way" of building GNU software. This is the way to go I think. Any reasons why it shouldn't be? I'll update with an answer if I get it to work...
I managed to compile after installing gfortran from http://r.research.att.com/tools/gcc-42-5666.3-darwin11.pkg, as explained here. I had to try to open the package a couple of times, though. First time it said that only apps from App Store can be installed. After installing gfortran, python setup.py build and python setup.py install worked fine. The unit tests of scipy though give a fairly high number of fails, not sure it's normal.
Ran 5481 tests in 82.079s
FAILED (KNOWNFAIL=13, SKIP=42, errors=11, failures=72)
<nose.result.TextTestResult run=5481 errors=11 failures=72>
In case you didn't already notice this: In newer versions of Xcode you have to explicitly install command line tools in the following way:
Preferences -> Downloads -> Components
And then click the "install" button for command line tools. This includes gfortran:
> gfortran -v
Using built-in specs.
Target: i686-apple-darwin10
Thread model: posix
gcc version 4.2.1 (Apple Inc. build 5664)
Admittedly, this does not solve all of my fortran needs (in some cases "./configure" scripts will complain that they cannot "compile a simple fotran program").
You could use brew (or Homebrew) to install gfortran.
$ brew install gfortran
I know you said you don't like MacPorts, but if you install the gcc48 port, it does in fact include gfortran (although you'll also have to do sudo port select --set gcc mp-gcc48 to get it to set up the symlink named gfortran).
Also, FWIW, the MacPorts option is not necessarily a binary - MacPorts can actually build it from source, which is why it sometimes takes a while. On the other hand, it also sometimes seems to get archived binaries from somewhere, but I think it depends on what the original author of the portfile uploaded.
I ended up compiling gfortran the source code provided at Apple's developer tools source code page. This seems to be working okay now - I've successfully compiled x86-64 and i386/i686 LAPACK, ATLAS and BLAS fortran libraries - but there are some ranlib tests which fail, when running make -k test in the build directories. (I could provide more info on that pastebin or somewhere, if someone wants...)
Build process
After asking the question, I downloaded Apple's llvmgcc42 source code tar archive, which includes the source code for llvm/gcc C, C++, ObjC and fortran compilers, and spent some time trying to compile a universal build of gfortran. The build takes about 30-60 minutes on my quad-core 2.8GHz Mac Pro, and became quite an involved process, so I wrote a set of build scripts for it, which I've shared at github.com.
....
I'll keep a tar archive of my build here for the time being, if anyone would like a copy. (Updated 26-Sep-2012) It'll only work if installed with a prefix of /usr/local/ though, unless you run install_name_tool on the executables and dylibs, to change the prefix from /usr/local to wherever you want to put it. You can test install_name's with otool -L filename (more info on the reasons for this is here).
The final build I'm now using also includes updates to the gcc/fortran and libgfortran directories, which I got from GNU GCC 4.2.4. These sources I got from my local GCC's mirror. There were only minor changes between 4.2.1 and 4.2.4, and the build scripts include the patches needed to upgrade the code.
The build-gfortran.sh script I wrote downloads missing dependencies (mpfr and gmp), compiles and cross-compiles them, patches differing headers with architecture-dependent preprocessor macros, and runs lipo to create universal binaries and libraries, eventually supporting both i386 and x86_64 architectures. The process is similar for llvmCore, and then GCC. I mostly copied code from the build_llvm and build_gcc bash scripts provided with Apple's llvmgcc42, but had some of it had to be modified, including a few lipo and install_name_tool commands.
The official way to compile Apple's gcc, using Xcode's gnumake just didn't work for me. I thought this should work just byadding "fortran" to the LANGUAGES variable in build_gcc.
With regards to compiling Scipy, still can't get that building perfectly. I've had to use clang and clang++ as C/C++ compilers, or else I get EXC_BAD_ACCESS malloc errors. Haven't tried the gcc/g++ compilers I built, just used the system ones. This is as reported for Lion, on the Scipy install page. I'm down to 11 errors and 1 failure, which are all raised from the same 3 function calls (_fitpack._bspleval, numeric.asarray, testing.utils.chk_same_position). Think that's pretty good, but I'd like every test to pass...
May I know if I can cross compile the Solaris x86 library from Solaris sparc server?
The source code is mainly in C++ (some C). I need to use the Solaris C++ compiler CC to compile. I understand that some compile or link flags are different between sparc and x86. I have done a check to make sure that the flags I used are common.
Is it possible to simply copy the library compiled in sparc to x86? Or I need to apply specific flag during compiling and linking?
Thanks,
The Sun/Oracle Studio C++ compilers do not support cross-compilation. You would need to use another compiler that does, like a specially built gcc.
Simply copying the library can't work - SPARC and x86 are very different instruction sets, with no binary compatibility between the two.
Even if you could cross compile the Solaris libraries on SPARC for x86, it would seem a lot simpler to just install the x86 compilers and libraries. The interdependencies of these libraries is probably so complex that such a project would probably not work.
What's preventing you from just downloading and installing the Studio software on x86 Solaris?
Oracle Sun Studio C++ compiler (CC) has --xarch option with big variety of architectures. There are: sparc, amd64, pentium_pro and various extensions/modifications. This flag should be provided for both compiler and linker if you compile and link in separate steps.
You can verify target architecture with file command; e.g:
bash-3.2$ file /usr/bin/CC
/usr/bin/CC: ELF 32-bit LSB executable 80386 Version 1 [FPU], dynamically linked, stripped
Please, refer to CC manual for details:
Sun Studio 11 C++ Man Page