compiling visual C++ code in linux?

Question

i have a visual C++ program which performs image matching. I am using openCV. I am looking to run the exe on a linux server. But i dont know how to compile visual C++ code in linux?

Can anyone plz help me in this regard . . .

Answer 1

There's also winelib and stuff. Point your build system to using winegcc/wineg++ as your compiler, and go for it. It can compile a fairly large subset of windows programs. This should be a good option if all you need is to get one or two programs to work.

Answer 2

If you did things smartly while writing the C++ code in MSVC, you isolated all platform-dependent code (i.e., Microsoft extensions to C++ and uses of Windows-only libraries) from the rest right from the start, and know exactly where to do the modifications to make it run on Linux as well.

Unfortunately, your question hints at this being your first attempt at cross-platform coding, and in that case, you probably littered Microsoft-isms all over your code, and have to pick through them one by one. Start the compiler, have a look at its error messages, and go from there. Good luck, it will be a pain, but also a very valuable lesson for your next project.

(I'm not finger-pointing at MSVC here. The very same is true for people who litter their code with GNU-isms and then want to have it compile on MSVC...)

The usual construct looks like this:

#if defined( _MSC_VER )
// Microsoft version
#elif defined( __GNUC__ )
// GCC version
#else
#error Platform / compiler not supported.
#endif

Edit: In case it is not obvious, the idea is to keep the ifdef'ed code above at an absolute minimum. Use typedef's, forwarding functions (i.e., log() to use either Unix or Windows logging), or - if all else fails - macros. Don't use the above all over the code, isolate it in a few header / implementation files, kept in a separate source folder.

You will also want to familiarize yourself with Makefiles (shameless plug: Makefile tutorial), because MSVC project files don't work on Linux (obviously). Makefiles, on the other hand, can work quite beautifully on Windows as well (e.g. through Cygwin, if you care to delve into how to call the MSVC compiler on the command line, roughly along these lines:

ifeq ($(OSTYPE),linux)
    CC := gcc
else
    CC := cl.exe
endif