mxe
glibc_version_header
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mxe | glibc_version_header | |
---|---|---|
9 | 8 | |
1,158 | 759 | |
1.4% | - | |
9.2 | 0.0 | |
7 days ago | 2 months ago | |
Makefile | C++ | |
GNU General Public License v3.0 or later | MIT License |
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Activity is a relative number indicating how actively a project is being developed. Recent commits have higher weight than older ones.
For example, an activity of 9.0 indicates that a project is amongst the top 10% of the most actively developed projects that we are tracking.
mxe
- MXE (M Cross Environment)
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Using pybind11 with minGW to cross compile pyhton module for Windows
Cross compiler 64bit minGW along with MXE environment
- Getting “QT with MinGW support”?
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Because cross-compiling binaries for Windows is easier than building natively
I used to use MXE [1] to compile fully static Windows binaries on Linux VMs hosted with Travis. It needed to crane in everything though, so it was a source of bottlenecks from time to time. I was also uncertain about the provenance of a lot of the dependencies in that toolchain. So when Travis died I took the opportunity to move Windows builds back to gnu with msys2, all over GH Actions. These are actually comparatively snappy and I’m reasonably satisfied with it.
[1] https://mxe.cc/
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Linux-to-Windows cross-compilation using MSYS2 packages
MXE readily supports GCC 12 as a plugin (just a configuration line): https://github.com/mxe/mxe/tree/master/plugins/gcc12
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Seer - a new gui frontend to gdb/mi (Updated v1.3)
Also, if you don't have any other significant dependencies, getting the development tools on Windows is not that hard with the Qt installer. Alternatively, there is MXE.
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Writing code in Linux, but creating a program in windows.
MXE (https://mxe.cc/) is a great cross compiler environment (on linux) that uses mingw.
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Cross-compilation on a mac
You can install Docker to build on any Linux distro, and if one of those is Ubuntu then you can use https://github.com/mxe/mxe to further build for Windows. Or VirtualBox + Ubuntu + MXE.
glibc_version_header
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Flatpak Is Not the Future
One major headache with trying to run precompiled binaries on Linux is that if they were compiled using a newer version of glibc than the target machine, they won't be able to run. Back while working on Factorio, I was trying to get around this problem with endless Docker containers, but coworker Wheybags came up with a much solution to this, which is simply to, at compile time, link to the oldest compatible version of glibc: https://github.com/wheybags/glibc_version_header
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Win32 Is the Only Stable ABI on Linux
If what you're doing works for you, great, but in case it stops working at some point (or if for some reason you need to build on a current-gen distro version), you could also consider using this:
https://github.com/wheybags/glibc_version_header
It's a set of autogenerated headers that use symbol aliasing to allow you to build against your current version of glibc, but link to the proper older versioned symbols such that it will run on whatever oldest version of glibc you select.
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Because cross-compiling binaries for Windows is easier than building natively
There are other approaches like https://github.com/wheybags/glibc_version_header or sysroots with older glibc, e.g. https://wiki.gentoo.org/wiki/Crossdev - you don't need your whole XP, just the the system libs to link against.
Sure, having a nice SDK where you can just specify the minimum vesion you want to support would be nice but who do you expect to develop such an SDK? GNU/glibc maintainers? They would rather you ship as source. Red Hat / SUSE / Canonical? They want you to target only their distro. Valve? They decided its easier to just provide an unchaning set of libraries since they need to support existing games that got things wrong anyway and already have a distribution platform to distribute such a base system along with the games without bundling it into every single one.
- Glibc Version Header Generator
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Thank You, Valve
A few links gathered from a quick google search as a primer:
http://stevehanov.ca/blog/?id=97
https://www.evanjones.ca/portable-linux-binaries.html
https://insanecoding.blogspot.com/2012/07/creating-portable-...
https://rpg.hamsterrepublic.com/ohrrpgce/Portable_GNU-Linux_...
https://github.com/wheybags/glibc_version_header
In other words: there are a lot of steps and a lot of gotchyas to doing this that you're glossing over. Linux userland libraries are generally designed with the intention that an army of third-party maintainers will integrate all of this desperately developed software together and place it in a repo. Naturally every distribution wants to do things a little differently too, and they have a habit of changing it up every couple years. When you try to step out of that mold things unsurprisingly become more difficult. Whereas Windows, Mac, Android, etc. have been designed since the beginning not to require that sort of thing and it is consequently a much, much more straightforward process.
I'm curious why, since you seem to believe the process is so straight-forward, you think it is that so few people distribute a simple binary? Why were Flatpak and AppImage invented?
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“LLVM-Libc” C Standard Library
> Binaries compiled against today's glibc can fail to run on a machine that hasn't been updated since last week because they rely on a new / different symbol.
Note, however, that it is a Glibc bug (modulo Drepper’s temper) if the reverse happens: Glibc symbol versioning ensures that binaries depending on an old Glibc (only) will run on a new one. So the proper way to build a maximally-compatible Linux executable would be to build a cross toolchain targeting an old Glibc and compile your code with it. Unfortunately, the build system is hell and old Glibcs doesn’t compile without backported patches, so while I did try to follow in the footsteps of a couple of people[1–4], I did not succeed.
Mass-rebuilds still happen with other ecosystems, though. GHC-compiled Haskell libraries are fine-grained and not ABI-stable across compiler versions, so my Arch box regularly gets hit with a deluge of teensy library updates, and Arch is currently undergoing a massive Python rebuild (blocking all other Python package updates) behind the scenes as well.
[1]: https://github.com/wheybags/glibc_version_header (hack but easy and will probably work most of the time)
What are some alternatives?
llvm-mingw - An LLVM/Clang/LLD based mingw-w64 toolchain
holy-build-box - System for building cross-distribution Linux binaries
seer - Seer - a gui frontend to gdb
overwatch-aimbot - 🔫🎮 An OpenCV based Overwatch Aimbot for Windows
quasi-msys2 - Cross-compile C/C++ from Linux to Windows using MSYS2 packages
osxcross - Mac OS X cross toolchain for Linux, FreeBSD, OpenBSD and Android (Termux)
displaylink-rpm - RPM sources for the DisplayLink USB display adapters
manylinux - Python wheels that work on any linux (almost)
musl-cross-make - Simple makefile-based build for musl cross compiler
ded - Dramatic EDitor
WSL - Issues found on WSL