Re: update: cross compiling Octave for MinGW systems

[Jordi Gutiérrez Hermoso]

On 13 December 2012 15:17, Ben Abbott <address@hidden> wrote:
> On Dec 13, 2012, at 3:06 PM, Jordi Gutiérrez Hermoso wrote:
>
>> On 13 December 2012 15:03, Ben Abbott <address@hidden> wrote:
>>
>>> On Dec 12, 2012, at 4:18 PM, John W. Eaton wrote:
>>>
>>>> * see whether this approach will also work for cross compiling for
>>>>   OS X systems.
>>>
>>> I'd be interested in helping with this (testing) when the time comes.  
>>> Perhaps I can build on Ubuntu (via VBOX) and then run on my MacOS X host?
>>
>> I'm interested to know how this works. Don't you need a cross compiler
>> from GNU into Mac OS X? Doesn't this mean you need to boot strap your
>> own gcc?

> I'm not sure I understand correctly, but ...
>
> We do have gcc compilers on MacOS X. What was need the Xcode stuff
> for are the system include files libraries. I assume this is
> essentially the same as for Windows?

:-)

No...

:-)

The Xcode stuff, including the "gcc" it ships (nowadays I think it's
just a shim clang frontend), is essentially useless for this purpose.

For cross-compiling, you need a special kind of compiler that runs on
a GNU host and generates a binary that runs on a Mac OS X target. The
mingw32 package that jwe is talking about is essentially a gcc that
has been bootstrapped (quis compiliet ipsos compilatores?) to produce
binaries for Windows while compiling on GNU/Linux. We would need
another such compiler for Mac OS X, and I don't think MXE provides one
yet. The GNU Lilypond package apparently does have such a compiler,
but I think it targets ancient Mac OS X versions.

> MacOS X will also need all the runtime dependencies.

Well, the idea is to compile all of those too. This could be full
liberation from Xcode! I don't know if there is a free tool that
generates .dmgs, though.

- Jordi G. H.