New comps.xml group for Windows cross-compiler

Richard W.M. Jones rjones at redhat.com
Fri Mar 6 16:21:02 UTC 2009


On Fri, Mar 06, 2009 at 05:05:37PM +0100, Kevin Kofler wrote:
> What I wonder is: should there not be one group per target operating system?
> While I can see the sense of bundling W32 and W64 together (but still
> wonder whether users won't prefer them separate), let's assume there was a
> legal way to build a cross compiler for OS X (AFAIK, there currently is
> none, unless you limit yourself to the base Darwin only): would people
> really want to install the MinGW stuff when all they care about is OS X or
> the opposite?

Oh I think we agree on this.  We discussed what packages might look
like on the fedora-mingw list some time back.  Here is the thread:

http://lists.fedoraproject.org/pipermail/fedora-mingw/2009-February/thread.html#464

(It's worth reading the whole thread, but the first message contains a
useful diagram).

As to the separate question about whether it's possible to build a
legal cross-compiler for OS X, there are several issues:

(1) We can build a cross-GCC no problem, in fact we've already done it.

But ...

(2) In order to link, the cross-GCC needs to use a tiny bit of
assembler code (like ~ 200 lines) which is APSL 1.0, which is not free
for Fedora.  So that needs to be rewritten or persuade Apple to
relicense.

But ...

(3) In order to run, you would need OS X.  (There is no "wine" for OS X).

In terms of APIs, Darwin is POSIX (almost straight BSD), and OS X is
well supplied with open APIs like GTK+OSX and Qt-Mac.  There is no
need for people to use proprietary APIs on OS X at all (such as
Carbon/Cocoa).

So there's a very good story in terms of us encouraging developers not
to get locked into proprietary APIs, there's a good way to provide OS X
endusers with freedom through applications that don't lock them in,
but at the end of the day developers will still need OS X to do final
tests on their applications.

Unless developers just shovel the OS X port of their application out
the door without testing!

Rich.

-- 
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