Re: cross compile to MacOS

[Zach Bacon]

The SDK is needed to actually produce a working gcc compiler to target macOS. In theory one could use clang since it can cross compile without the need to be specially compiled itself. But it would still need the SDK regardless.

On Tue., Nov. 24, 2020, 4:50 p.m. Valerio Messina, <efa@iol.it> wrote:

Il 24/11/20 alle 11:52, Tony Theodore ha scritto:
>
>
>> On 23 Nov 2020, at 06:37, Robert Heller <heller@deepsoft.com> wrote:
>>
>> Just to add another monkey wrench: *I* have heard vauge rumors that Apple
>> might be thinking of moving away from x86_64 flavor processors (likely
>> ARM64). (I believe that iPads, iPhones, and iPods are all ARM based.)
>
> Indeed, the first M1-based Macs were released two weeks ago and are able to
> run iOS apps natively. Their marketing call it "Apple Silicon", but it's
> a variant of the ARM-based aarch64[1]. I've had a Mac Mini in my shopping
> cart since then, and this thread may finally tip the scales.
>
> There's an emulation layer for running Intel binaries, but most developers
> will ship so-called "fat" binaries[2] containing both aarch64-apple-darwin
> and x86_64-apple-darwin instructions. These are fairly easy to create in
> practice (via `CFLAGS = -arch`) and I don't think that it will be much of
> hurdle to cross-compiling (compared to some other issues).
>
> Cheers,
>
> Tony
>
>
> [1] https://git.savannah.gnu.org/gitweb/?p=config.git;a=commitdiff;h=2593751ef276497e312d7c4ce7fd049614c7bf80
> [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fat_binary


I am happy that my mail has animated the debate on cross-compilation to
MacOS.

In fact the most promising of the cross compilers I found is osxcross, I
hope it can be integrated into MXE.

Osxcross however requires the Apple SDK (MinGw do not require MS Visual
Studio, but only Win headers files) which is giant and would be added to
MXE which is already huge.
Is the SDK really necessary also to compile CLI / SDL / GTK code or is
it only needed to generate native Apple interfaces?

thank you,
--
Valerio