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> And Apple needs a development platform, for people to develop iOS/macOS apps on, and for its own OS developers to use in developing iOS/macOS. Have they show

> And Apple needs a development platform, for people to develop iOS/macOS apps on, and for its own OS developers to use in developing iOS/macOS. Have they shown developers much respect in the past? You can't even compile for the mac on other OSes, from what I hear.

skissane 6y ago
> Have they shown developers much respect in the past? I totally agree Apple is not the most developer-friendly company, and I wish they'd focus on developer needs more. They should copy a page out of Microsoft's book and take Steve Ballmer's "developers, developers, developers" to heart. > You can't even compile for the mac on other OSes, from what I hear. I can compile Windows software on Linux or macOS using MinGW. Did Microsoft do anything to enable that? No, independent developers cloned the Microsoft API headers, etc, to build a cross-platform compilation environment for Windows. There really isn't a MinGW-equivalent for macOS. There should be. But, just as Microsoft didn't do anything to produce MinGW, I don't know why we should expect Apple to do anything to produce the equivalent for macOS. (It should actually be an easier job than the MinGW developers had – macOS uses the open source LLVM toolchain which is already cross-platform – it is just a matter of providing header files and library stubs for use when compiling on other operating systems.)
- jki275 6y ago
  Why would you need mingw on a Mac?
  - skissane 6y ago
    Suppose you have an application written in C, which is designed to be portable to macOS, Linux and Windows. Using your macOS laptop, you can compile it and run it under macOS. You can also compile the Windows executable from your macOS laptop, although you still need to move the executable to a Windows VM or machine to actually test it. But it means you can at least check your code change compiles correctly for Windows (which does have various differences in APIs, headers, etc) without actually having to go the Windows machine/VM. (You might try testing the Windows executable under Wine on either macOS, or even a Linux Docker container with Docker for Mac – however, that doesn't work well in practice, because Wine is full of bugs and gaps, and a lot of the time the executable doesn't work properly under Wine due to Wine bugs/gaps but works fine on real Windows. So you still need the Windows VM for testing. But you can stay away from it during compilation.)
    - jki275 6y ago
      Ah, ok. Fair enough, I misunderstood what you were trying to do. Mingw on mac is evidently in homebrew. I've never used it, no idea how well it works. I don't write Windows software if I can ever help it.
      - skissane 6y ago
        > Mingw on mac is evidently in homebrew. I've never used it, no idea how well it works. I don't write Windows software if I can ever help it. Well, it works just as well as MinGW on Windows does. If something isn't working with MinGW on macOS/Linux, it isn't going to work in MinGW on Windows either. And MinGW on Windows works pretty well, but occasionally you hit some odd problems you might not have had with the Microsoft SDK (e.g. [1]). [1] https://stackoverflow.com/questions/57885666/mingw-localtime-r-works-in-one-time-zone-fails-in-another https://stackoverflow.com/questions/57885666/mingw-localtime...

skissane 6y ago

> Have they shown developers much respect in the past? I totally agree Apple is not the most developer-friendly company, and I wish they'd focus on developer needs more. They should copy a page out of Microsoft's book and take Steve Ballmer's "developers, developers, developers" to heart. > You can't even compile for the mac on other OSes, from what I hear. I can compile Windows software on Linux or macOS using MinGW. Did Microsoft do anything to enable that? No, independent developers cloned the Microsoft API headers, etc, to build a cross-platform compilation environment for Windows. There really isn't a MinGW-equivalent for macOS. There should be. But, just as Microsoft didn't do anything to produce MinGW, I don't know why we should expect Apple to do anything to produce the equivalent for macOS. (It should actually be an easier job than the MinGW developers had – macOS uses the open source LLVM toolchain which is already cross-platform – it is just a matter of providing header files and library stubs for use when compiling on other operating systems.)

jki275 6y ago
Why would you need mingw on a Mac?
- skissane 6y ago
  Suppose you have an application written in C, which is designed to be portable to macOS, Linux and Windows. Using your macOS laptop, you can compile it and run it under macOS. You can also compile the Windows executable from your macOS laptop, although you still need to move the executable to a Windows VM or machine to actually test it. But it means you can at least check your code change compiles correctly for Windows (which does have various differences in APIs, headers, etc) without actually having to go the Windows machine/VM. (You might try testing the Windows executable under Wine on either macOS, or even a Linux Docker container with Docker for Mac – however, that doesn't work well in practice, because Wine is full of bugs and gaps, and a lot of the time the executable doesn't work properly under Wine due to Wine bugs/gaps but works fine on real Windows. So you still need the Windows VM for testing. But you can stay away from it during compilation.)
  - jki275 6y ago
    Ah, ok. Fair enough, I misunderstood what you were trying to do. Mingw on mac is evidently in homebrew. I've never used it, no idea how well it works. I don't write Windows software if I can ever help it.
    - skissane 6y ago
      > Mingw on mac is evidently in homebrew. I've never used it, no idea how well it works. I don't write Windows software if I can ever help it. Well, it works just as well as MinGW on Windows does. If something isn't working with MinGW on macOS/Linux, it isn't going to work in MinGW on Windows either. And MinGW on Windows works pretty well, but occasionally you hit some odd problems you might not have had with the Microsoft SDK (e.g. [1]). [1] https://stackoverflow.com/questions/57885666/mingw-localtime-r-works-in-one-time-zone-fails-in-another https://stackoverflow.com/questions/57885666/mingw-localtime...