Developing Windows applications on Linux?
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:
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.
Will Wine be enough to test the cross compiled version (after all the logic is tested in the Linux version)?
Is this a good idea? :-)
Answer
Check Qt too. It's a very rich cross-platform framework.
As for installers I'd highly recommend WiX.
For testing it will be much better to use some kind of virtualization like Sun Microsystems's VirtualBox. I believe you could use a trial version of Windows or Windows 7 RC, which is free to use until March 2010.