Re: cross compile to MacOS

[Volker Diels-Grabsch]

Dear Lars,

Thanks a lot for sharing your experiences!

I believe remember the osxcross project, but given it started at 2014,
maybe my memories are wrong.

Anyway, feel free to open an issue to discuss all technical details in
a separate GitHub thread.  Maybe there exists already an issue that
could serve as a starting point.


Regards,
Volker


Lars Holger Engelhard wrote:
> Dear Volker, Zach, Robert and List,
> 
> I've been happily contributing to MXE in the past, because we do cross
> compile a lot using Qt. MacOS has always been on our list, too.
> There actually was some project achievements in the past, we've been
> calling it LXE. It has been discontinued because we noticed it seems
> feasible, but would need a complete re-write to give it a jumping base
> for others in a lack of time. Yet, this threat is encouraging to share
> our experience and thoughts.
> 
> What have we done? We've identified MXE success factors. It is the basic
> core environment built first, then adding the libraries like a recipe.
> Reminding us of Yocto, it is a mechanism that just works and invites
> plenty of people to contribute.
> From here, we've decided to give several approaches a try calling it the
> core, like c++ and basic libs in MXE. We have tried a lot and what seems
> to be most promising was osxcross (https://github.com/tpoechtrager/osxcross)
> 
> This actually worked in a PoC, but it is not pretty. Once you create an
> osxcross core environment, we feel confident that adding the mechanisms
> of MXE could create the libraries on top.
> 
> 
> 
> Can we contribute? Currently we are launching a new company on
> autonomous boats, sucking out a lot of time. If possible, we would
> contribute 2021.
> 
> Maybe it takes a little adjustment to MXE first. To make the first built
> steps crystal clear being an 'environment builder', before adding more
> complexity adding OSX environment. In too much complexity, people will
> likely get lost - and there is one thing we want to avoid: people
> getting to scared of the architecture jeopardizing the continuous
> efforts of MXE.
> 
> Best regards,
>    Lars
> 
> 
> Am 22.11.2020 um 19:16 schrieb Volker Diels-Grabsch:
> > Dear All,
> >
> > Thanks to Robert and Zack for explaining the situation so well, I
> > don't have much to add here from a technical point of view.
> >
> > So instead let me add a more "historical" point of view: When I
> > started mingw-cross-env and renamed it to "MXE", which stands for
> > "M cross environment", I always had two "M"s in mind: MinGW and
> > MacOSX.
> >
> > Moreover, I did have an actual software project (written in Qt) which
> > I needed to port to Windows as well as Mac.
> >
> > But setting up cross compiling on Mac was so cumbersome that I only
> > cross-built the Windows version on a Debian system with MXE, and
> > compiled the Mac version natively.
> >
> > On the other hand, there have been promising approaches at that time,
> > extracting stuff from the XCode packages and whatnot.  Perhaps there
> > are still people out there having some (limited) success with that.
> > But the amount of time to get into that stuff, and to make it working
> > - this was to much time for myself at that time, and for all others
> > who tried later as well.
> >
> > So if you think you have enough spare time and would like to break
> > that nut, feel encouraged to try!  Extending MXE to MacOSX would be a
> > huge achievement.  Just be warned that this might be a lot harder than
> > it may seem, and that it might even turn out to be impossible to keep
> > working in the long run.
> >
> >
> > Regards,
> > Volker
> >
> >
> > Robert Heller wrote:
> >> At Sat, 21 Nov 2020 14:48:16 -0500 Zach Bacon <wowzaman12@gmail.com> wrote:
> >>
> >>> In theory, yes it's possible but like what Robert mention, it's a 
> >>> different beast than targeting windows platforms and to be honest I 
> >>> don't think it would be beneficial to work on such a solution, 
> >>> especially where you run into issues where you need to ensure the binary 
> >>> can work and without a working macOS platform to test that sort of 
> >>> thing, honestly I think a lot of compilation tests could potentially 
> >>> fail because of that. At least targeting windows platforms using mxe you 
> >>> have things like wine to test your binaries on.
> >> A major problem (as I mentioned) is that Apple has put *special* effort 
> >> into
> >> making it hard to coss-build for MacOSX and hard to even run MacOSX on
> >> anything other then a genuine Macintosh, both at the bare level or as a vm.
> >> Apple makes money selling their hardware. They pretty much give their 
> >> software
> >> away, but with the gotcha: you gotta buy the hardware to actually run the
> >> software.
> >>
> >>> On 2020-11-21 2:18 p.m., Robert Heller wrote:
> >>>> At Sat, 21 Nov 2020 19:58:23 +0100 Valerio Messina <efa@iol.it> wrote:
> >>>>
> >>>>> hi,
> >>>>> I'm using MXE with satisfaction and can generate for Win32 and 64.
> >>>>>
> >>>>> I want to cross compile my CLI, SDL and GTK applications for MacOS too.
> >>>>> I looked around and found some cross-compiler for MacOS, but all require
> >>>>> to download and install the Apple SDK (many GB), and some are not
> >>>>> maintained anymore.
> >>>>>
> >>>>> Reading the MXE Introduction say it can cross compile for various target
> >>>>> platforms, but as now seem only Win32 and Win64 are supported.
> >>>>> Since CLI, SDL and GTK are natively cross-platform, and MacOS is quite
> >>>>> similar to Linux (it is already supported as host), I hope no Apple SDK
> >>>>> is needed.
> >>>> MacOSX is layered on BSD (a variant called Darwin), which is POSIX (like
> >>>> Linux).  Apple is rather protective of MacOSX, patitularly the non-free
> >>>> parts.
> >>>>
> >>>>> Are there any chance that MXE will extended to support MacOS as target?
> >>>> Highly unlikely -- MacOSX is a very different animal from Win32 and 
> >>>> Win64. To
> >>>> have any chance of properly supporting MacOSX, partularly the current 
> >>>> version,
> >>>> you will have to get an actual Mac -- most likely you option is get a 
> >>>> MacMini,
> >>>> which can be networked and ssh'ed into from a Linux machine (shell / CLI
> >>>> access) and/or use a VNCViewer if you need to use the MacOSX GUI (eg 
> >>>> testing
> >>>> GTK apps). And running MacOSX in a virtual machine is a very tricky 
> >>>> business
> >>>> -- said to be possible, but you need to first create a virtual 
> >>>> "Hackintosh",
> >>>> which is somewhat non-tivial.
> >>>>
> >>>> The build tools for MacOSX are freely available from Apple, but they are 
> >>>> only
> >>>> meant to run on an actual Mac.
> >>>>
> >>>>> thank you for this good software,
> >>>                                                                           
> >>>    
> >>>
> >> -- 
> >> Robert Heller             -- Cell: 413-658-7953 GV: 978-633-5364
> >> Deepwoods Software        -- Custom Software Services
> >> http://www.deepsoft.com/  -- Linux Administration Services
> >> heller@deepsoft.com       -- Webhosting Services
> >>                 
> >>
> 

-- 
Volker Diels-Grabsch
----<<<((()))>>>----