Learning and cross-platform development (C++)

Question

I am writing a small C++ program for fun and for extending my C++ skill. Since its scope is relatively small, I also planning to try out cross-platform development by making this program support both Windows and Linux.

I reckon my C++ proficiency is sitting somewhere between casual and intermediate level: OO, a bit of templates and design patterns, used STL before and trying to look into it more in details, ... However, while coding this little program, I find that the deeper I dig into C++, the more pain I feel, especially when I come to understanding and dealing with differences between different platform's/vendor's implementation.

The use of cross-platform frameworks like Qt, ACE, Boost seems help to speed up development a lot thus make life easier, but I worry if this will beat my purpose. Can somebody give some advice if there is any "best practice" for doing C++ cross-platform development? Thanks.

Answer 1

Can somebody give some advice if there is any "best practice" for doing C++ cross-platform development?

There are three things:

1. Write your own code so that it's portable

2. Wrap platform-specific APIs behind an abstraction/insulation/utility layer

3. Choose cross-platform libraries

You can choose option #2 and/or #3.

Advantages of #3 over #2 tend to be things like, "It's already written, debugged, and supported"; and the disadvantages are like, "I have to learn it, I might have to pay for it, I can't necessarily support it myself, and it may not do exactly what I want."

Developers will often prefer option #3 instead of #2, especially if it's free open source (which all three of the libraries that you cited are).

Answer 2

http://blog.backblaze.com/2008/12/15/10-rules-for-how-to-write-cross-platform-code/

Should provide more detail to the answers already given.

Also I suggest using existing libraries that abstract endianness, data type sizes and differences. The following should be considered before starting your cross-platform project.

GUI

1. Qt
2. XVT
3. wxWidgets

General Libraries/frameworks

1. STL (Incorporated in most platform libraries already)
2. Boost

Game Development

1. SDL
2. Cocos2d-x

Answer 3

Use gcc. It's available on both Windows and Linux and the libraries and language syntax is identical on both platforms.

For cross platform GUI applications, Qt is a good idea. There is no getting away from having a dependency on a GUI framework if you are trying to achieve platform independence.

Answer 4

Unless you are doing GUI stuff cross platform isn't a big problem.

There are some small issues to do with filesystems ( different / \ separators, allowed characters in filenames etc) but these are at the application level rather than the c++.

Doing major applications gets more complex, you need to handle help, file locations an possibly security and user info in a cross platform way. For simple algorithm type programming there isn't a problem.

Qt is mainly a GUI library, although it has extra cross platform filesystems stuff. STL, Boost, ACE are cross platform but that isn't there main point.