C++ Windows Development with Eclipse, MinGW and wxWidgets

I’ve recently gotten interested lately in “write once, run everywhere” apps for C++,  where we don’t have the luxury of a Java or similar virtual machine. The idea behind writing in C++ is to remove the dependency of my usual Java runtime environment, and instead use the wxWidgets project to build a C++ project which can be compiled for any architecture it supports (Windows/Linux/Mac). It may also offer performance benefits. In the following guide, I wanted the wxWidgets library statically compiled so that the compilation’s end result is one stand-alone executable which requires nothing else to run.

wxWidgets provides a large set of C++ libraries which will act as an intermediary between my code and operating system-specific calls, such as window handling, networking and disk access. Multi-platform support is then simply a matter of changing the wxWidgets library from one OS’s version to another.

Our ingredients:

• A Windows environment (in my case, Windows 7 Pro 64-bit)
• Eclipse 3.5 “Ganymede” with CDT Plug-in
• MinGW 5.1.6
• MSYS 1.0.11
• wxWidgets 2.8.10 source

Here’s my setup guide.

 

1. Install MinGW 5.1.6 http://sourceforge.net/projects/mingw/files/
2. Install MSYS 1.0.11 http://sourceforge.net/projects/mingw/files/MSYS%20Base%20System/msys-1.0.11/MSYS-1.0.11.exe/download
3. Prepend ‘C:\MinGW\bin;C:\msys\1.0\bin;’ as the ‘Path’ Windows environmental variable
4. Install Eclipse and its CDT (C++) development perspective. At this point, Eclipse should be able to compile non-wxWidget C++ apps.
   
5. Install wxWidgets 2.8.10 to C:\MinGW http://www.wxwidgets.org/downloads/
6. Launch MSYS, and input the following commands (these last two commands may take upwards of ten minutes each to execute, depending on your computer’s performance):
   cd /mingw/wxWidgets-2.8.10
   ./configure –prefix=/mingw –disable-shared
   make && make install
   
7. Once completed, should be ready to compile existing wxWidgets C++ projects.
8. Setting up a new wxWidgets C++ project.
   Project properties -> C/C++ General -> Path and Symbols: set active configuration to ‘Release’
   Project properties -> C/C++ General -> Path and Symbols -> Includes tab. For GNU C++, add directory ‘C:\MinGW\include\wx-2.8’ for all configurations.
   Project properties -> C/C++ General -> Indexer: enable project-specific settings. EDIT 2: ensure “index unused headers as C++ files” is checked.
   Project properties -> C/C++ Build -> Settings -> Tool Settings tab -> GCC C++ Compiler/Directories: add include path
   "C:\MinGW\include\wx-2.8"
   and
   "C:\MinGW\lib\wx\include\msw-ansi-release-static-2.8"
   Project properties -> C/C++ Build -> Settings -> Tool Settings tab -> GCC C++ Linker: set command line pattern
   ${COMMAND} ${OUTPUT_FLAG}${OUTPUT_PREFIX}${OUTPUT} ${INPUTS} ${FLAGS}
   Project properties -> C/C++ Build -> Settings -> Tool Settings tab -> GCC C++ Linker/Miscellaneous: set Linker flags
   -mthreads  -Wl,–subsystem,windows -mwindows /mingw/wxWidgets-2.8.10/lib/libwx_msw_richtext-2.8.a /mingw/wxWidgets-2.8.10/lib/libwx_msw_aui-2.8.a /mingw/wxWidgets-2.8.10/lib/libwx_msw_xrc-2.8.a /mingw/wxWidgets-2.8.10/lib/libwx_msw_qa-2.8.a /mingw/wxWidgets-2.8.10/lib/libwx_msw_html-2.8.a /mingw/wxWidgets-2.8.10/lib/libwx_msw_adv-2.8.a /mingw/wxWidgets-2.8.10/lib/libwx_msw_core-2.8.a /mingw/wxWidgets-2.8.10/lib/libwx_base_xml-2.8.a /mingw/wxWidgets-2.8.10/lib/libwx_base_net-2.8.a /mingw/wxWidgets-2.8.10/lib/libwx_base-2.8.a -lwxregex-2.8 -lwxexpat-2.8 -lwxtiff-2.8 -lwxjpeg-2.8 -lwxpng-2.8 -lwxzlib-2.8 -lrpcrt4 -loleaut32 -lole32 -luuid -lwinspool -lwinmm -lshell32 -lcomctl32 -lcomdlg32 -lctl3d32 -ladvapi32 -lwsock32 –lgdi32

   *EDIT*: allow Eclipse auto-complete:
   Project properties –> C/C++ General –> Paths and Symbols –> Library Paths tab, add “C:\MinGW\include\wx-2.8” (“include in all configurations” checked).

9. Now ready to build and execute.

The above is based on a dynamic compilation of wxWidgets tutorial.

Since this C++ project will be GNU compiler compatible, we should be able to set up a similar development environment in Linux and Mac OS.

I believe you can even cross-compile for an OS that isn’t Windows, from Windows, but haven’t tried it out yet – please leave your experiences in the comment section below!

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