How to detect reliably Mac OS X, iOS, Linux, Windo

Question

If there's some cross-platform C/C++ code that should be compiled on Mac OS X, iOS, Linux, Windows, how can I detect them reliably during preprocessor process?

Answer 1

Kind of a corollary answer: the people on [this site] have taken the time to make tables of macros defined for every OS/compiler pair.

For example, you can see that _WIN32 is NOT defined on Windows with Cygwin (POSIX), while it IS defined for compilation on Windows, Cygwin (non-POSIX), and MinGW with every available compiler (Clang, GNU, Intel, etc.).

Anyway, I found the tables quite informative and thought I'd share here.

Answer 2

As Jake points out, TARGET_IPHONE_SIMULATOR is a subset of TARGET_OS_IPHONE.

Also, TARGET_OS_IPHONE is a subset of TARGET_OS_MAC.

So a better approach might be:

#ifdef _WIN64
   //define something for Windows (64-bit)
#elif _WIN32
   //define something for Windows (32-bit)
#elif __APPLE__
    #include "TargetConditionals.h"
    #if TARGET_OS_IPHONE && TARGET_IPHONE_SIMULATOR
        // define something for simulator   
    #elif TARGET_OS_IPHONE
        // define something for iphone  
    #else
        #define TARGET_OS_OSX 1
        // define something for OSX
    #endif
#elif __linux
    // linux
#elif __unix // all unices not caught above
    // Unix
#elif __posix
    // POSIX
#endif

Answer 3

There are predefined macros that are used by most compilers, you can find the list here. GCC compiler predefined macros can be found here. Here is an example for gcc:

#ifdef _WIN32
   //define something for Windows (32-bit and 64-bit, this part is common)
   #ifdef _WIN64
      //define something for Windows (64-bit only)
   #else
      //define something for Windows (32-bit only)
   #endif
#elif __APPLE__
    #include "TargetConditionals.h"
    #if TARGET_IPHONE_SIMULATOR
         // iOS Simulator
    #elif TARGET_OS_IPHONE
        // iOS device
    #elif TARGET_OS_MAC
        // Other kinds of Mac OS
    #else
    #   error "Unknown Apple platform"
    #endif
#elif __linux__
    // linux
#elif __unix__ // all unices not caught above
    // Unix
#elif defined(_POSIX_VERSION)
    // POSIX
#else
#   error "Unknown compiler"
#endif

The defined macros depend on compiler that you are going to use.

The _WIN64 #ifdef can be nested into the _WIN32 #ifdef because _WIN32 is defined when targeting Windows, not only the x86 version. This prevents code duplication if some includes are common to both.