Re: Building 64-bit on Windows

[Sam Izzo]

Hey Riccardo,

On 30/10/2018 10:30 AM, Riccardo Mottola wrote:
> Do you really need libobjc2 or is your code fine with GCC runtime?
> Would it be easier to convert it to GNU runtime instead of rewriting it?
>
> Second, do you really need 64bit?
I definitely need 64-bit. I'll give you a bit more information about 
what I'm trying to do. We have a game which has been built in 
Objective-C for iOS using Interface Builder. We want to port it to the 
Unity game engine so we can target Windows. The UI will be entirely 
rebuilt in Unity and we want to compile as much of the existing Obj-C 
code into a DLL as we can. The code is fairly cleanly split into game 
code and UI code so this shouldn't be too much work. The Unity editor 
and engine uses C# for game code but can load native DLLs and access 
them with P/Invoke. However, although the editor can build games out to 
32-bit executables, the editor itself is 64-bit, so we need a 64-bit 
version of the DLL so we can actually test the game in the editor for 
faster iteration. Unity stopped supporting the 32-bit editor quite a few 
revisions ago now and we don't want to use an old version of Unity.

So our idea is that we would build the Objective-C code into a DLL and 
then expose it via a C interface to C#. The game would then ship with 
that DLL (and any dependencies obviously like libobjc2) and we should be 
able to also iterate in the editor as well.

If the gcc runtime can be used to build 64-bit then maybe we can use it. 
I haven't investigated that though - we were trying to build with clang 
since the code is fairly modern Obj-C and uses some features that didn't 
seem to be in gcc (or at least the gcc that shipped with the installer) 
like generics.

> the
> supplied installer works and is "proven". It is relatively easily to 
> update some of its dependencies and then upgrade gnustep core "in 
> place" and get a current gnustep installation. I was unable to 
> repackage this work, otherwise I would have distributed it.
>
> I have read here that people got gnustep to run on MinGW64 - there 
> were some earlier post and commits. I Attempted but failed, the issue 
> might be on my side. I haven't thrown the towel, but unfortunately 
> even if there is demand for GNUstep on windows, I'm almost alone 
> there, so don't hold your breath, you would choke.
Thanks, I saw some posts about that. Maybe I should try again!

Cheers,
Sam