Re: cross compile to MacOS

[Manner Róbert]

Hi,

On 11/21/20 8:18 PM, 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.

Nowadays it is not that hard, virtualbox got a lot of support for that.
We use this script for nearly automatic VM creation, it supports
multiple versions of macOS:

https://github.com/myspaghetti/macos-virtualbox

I find it very useful. But note - as others already stated - that
running macOS virtualized or non-virtualized is only legal on Apple
hardware.

There is also a project called "darling" which can run mac applications
to some extent (similar to wine). https://github.com/darlinghq/darling
Last time I checked it wasn't very useful, but your use case may be
different...

Robert


> 
> 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,
>