Alex Rivera | Logout

Developing Windows applications on Linux?

Asked 2009-08-06T09:34:37.660
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My primary OS is Linux, but now I'm forced to write some C++ applications for Windows. I was thinking about developing on the Linux box with cross platform libraries like WxWidgets (and some care about other platform dependencies) and then cross compiling the result to mingw target.

So the tools I'm thinking of using are

  • g++ for compilation and cross-compilation.
  • CMake
  • WxWidgets
  • ??? for making windows installer packages
  • wine for testing of the windows version

And my questions:

  1. What are some free (or even better open source) installers for Windows that I might use to create the final package? It would help if the package could be prepared from Linux.

  2. Will Wine be enough to test the cross compiled version (after all the logic is tested in the Linux version)?

  3. Is this a good idea? :-)

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NSIS, the Nullsoft Scriptable Install System can be compiled under Linux and used to produce install binaries for Windows. The instructions are here. Read the general section, and the section for building on POSIX.

I use this to produce installs for a few projects.

answered 2009-08-07T00:06:24.127

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