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Are there any user friendly tools out there to cross-compile from Windows to Linux?

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    Funny: all that stuff going through the VS IDE is what confuses the heck out of me - there's so much configuration required to get it to work. It's so much easier on Linux where you don't have it!
    – Jonathan Leffler
    Commented Jan 22, 2011 at 19:24
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    Usually "a cross-compiler from X to Y" would mean, "a compiler that itself runs on X, but produces binaries that run on Y". So you're asking for a compiler that runs on Windows and produces Linux binaries. Is that what you want? The usual way to do it is to compile for linux on linux. The usual reason for cross-compiling is that Y is not a viable development environment (e.g. because it's a mobile phone, set-top box, Roomba, etc), maybe you'd be better off finding a Linux IDE you can live with?
    – Steve Jessop
    Commented Jan 22, 2011 at 19:31
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    @ H.Josef come-one you can compile code for an avr uControler with a compiler running under windows and you can't compile code for linux using a compiler that runs under windows ??? I don't believe that .
    – neo_x3m
    Commented Jan 22, 2011 at 19:52
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    @neo_x3m AFAIK you can compile standard C++ code using any compiler, but creating a library (and testing it) on a completely different operating system is cumbersome and even impossible, Once I tried to create and test a dynamic linux library (.so) using MingW and it did not work, it did not work even with Cygwin since Windows environment is very different from Linux.
    – Y.H.
    Commented Jan 22, 2011 at 20:08
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    Running the Linux binary would be very cumbersome, but if you have all the libs/OBJ in Linux format, but compiling is nothing magical... if a Linux compiler app would run on Windows, why shouldn't it work? Why couldn't you even compile a Linux compiler under Windows?
    – Mr. Boy
    Commented Feb 14, 2011 at 18:42

5 Answers 5

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crosstool-ng supports building cross-compilers with cygwin host.

Overview:

  • Install cygwin, with development packages
  • Download crosstool-ng
  • Extract the tarball (tar xvjf crosstool-ng*)
  • Run ./configure
  • When configure complains about a missing tool, go back to cygwin setup and install the corresponding package (e.g. flex, libtool, ncurses-devel) You'll need at least the following:
    • Devel/gperf
    • Devel/bison
    • Devel/byacc
    • Devel/wget
    • Devel/patch
    • Devel/make (GNU version)
    • Devel/automake 1.10+
    • Libs/libncursesw10
    • Libs/libncursesw10-devel
  • make
  • make install
  • Create a new directory for building the cross-compiler, e.g. /usr/src/cross-linux-gnu-root
  • Enable system-wide case sensitivity support in the registry (see https://superuser.com/questions/266110/how-do-you-make-windows-7-fully-case-sensitive-with-respect-to-the-filesystem#answer-842670)
  • Mount the directory case-sensitive (e.g. mount c:/cygwin/usr/src/cross-linux-gnu-root /usr/src/cross-linux-gnu -o binary,posix=1)
  • From inside the cross-compiler build directory, ct-ng menuconfig
  • In the menus, set target architecture to x86 (probably) and subarchitecture to i686 (avoids GCC 4.8 issues, thanks osm0sis), target kernel to linux, and target C library to glibc, and enable the C++ compiler.
  • To work around make 4.0 issues, also enable EXPERIMENTAL in Paths and misc options then, go in Companion tools (at top-level) and enable Build some companion tools and then make 3.81 (Thanks osm0sis)
  • wget has issues with the latest kernel.org certificates so use the .wgetrc method in this accepted answer: How do I fix certificate errors when running wget on an HTTPS URL in Cygwin? (Thanks osm0sis)
  • Currently 3 file patches are required to avoid further errors:
  • ct-ng build

Of course, this is NOT going to enable you to build linux applications from inside Visual Studio. (VS2010 and later let you build with other toolchains such as gcc, but you'd need an appropriate toolchain description in addition to the cross-compiler built by crosstool-ng). But you'll have a working g++-linux-gnu, which you can either run directly or using a Makefile.

NOTE: Building the cross-compiler takes a LONG time. osm0sis has provided a prebuilt gcc 4.8.1 here, along with his notes on building the cross-compiler (used to update this answer).

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  • Is it possible to create and link against dynamic Linux libraries using this approach? if not, then why not just sticking to the easier-to-deply MingW which compiles the code to Windows/Linux binaries?
    – Y.H.
    Commented Jan 22, 2011 at 21:19
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    What's a "Windows/Linux" binary? AFAIK, mingw is just gcc-for-windows, and makes PE executables. Linux binaries must be in linux-compatible formats, of which ELF is the most popular. I'm in the middle of the ct-ng build step now, trying to make sure my answer is as complete as possible and includes solutions to any gotchas along the way. And yes, the compiler I'm building will generate ELF executables which are dynamically linked against glibc (and other libraries as appropriate).
    – Ben Voigt
    Commented Jan 22, 2011 at 21:30
  • What I meant is standard code that can be compiled either on GCC/Linux, or MingW/Windows. +1 for clarification about the different binary formats.
    – Y.H.
    Commented Jan 22, 2011 at 21:42
  • I had a _libintl_gettext error and fixed it here: sourceware.org/ml/crossgcc/2012-05/msg00012.html
    – Duncan Calvert
    Commented Jun 22, 2013 at 17:59
  • While mounting the directory I got mount: warning: couldn't determine mount type. Still unresolved.
    – Duncan Calvert
    Commented Jun 22, 2013 at 19:31
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Your best bet is to use a cross platform IDE like Code::Blocks that can import MSVC projects, and generate a Makefile for Linux, which you can then run on a Linux (with even the same program if you so wish).

So your work flow would then look something like the following:

Code, Compile, and debug on MSVC -> import into Code::Blocks & generate Makefile
-> test compile and debug with GCC
-> copy to Linux with Code::Blocks -> test compile & debug on Linux

It's a little obtuse, probably, but at least Code::Blocks takes care of a lot of those small details with things like Makefiles, and what not.

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Compile to Linux from Windows without to use virtualization or cross compiler but only natively via CoLinux. Create native Linux executable files without leave (reboot) windows. C/C++ Compiling for Linux under Windows through Cooperative Linux. The fastest switching between Windows and Linux through Alt+Tab (no restarting or rebooting needed):

  1. Install CoLinux
  2. Use CoLinux root file system image: Ubuntu-9.04-1gb.7z
  3. Start CoLinux
  4. Change string archive.ubuntu.com to old-releases.ubuntu.com with:
$ sudo vi /etc/apt/sources.list
  1. Update your configuration:
$ sudo apt-get update
  1. Install two software packages to be able to compile your programs (c/c++, gcc compilers, mysql dev 5.1):
$ sudo apt-get install build-essential
$ sudo apt-get install libmysqlclient15-dev
  1. Accessing Windows directories from CoLinux:
$ mount cofs0 /mnt/ -t cofs
$ cd /mnt
  1. Compile
$ c++ your.source.cc -o executable.name
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  • Cooperative Linux does not support x64 architecture yet.
    – Hamid Rouhani
    Commented Sep 22, 2019 at 11:35
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Are you asking for something that can take code written to run on Windows and make it run on linux? There's not really a compiler that does that - but maybe you're looking for Wine ( http://www.winehq.org/ ) which lets you run Windows apps on linux (if they use APIs Wine has thunked out).

Edit: I'm assuming your code is using Windows APIs (Win32, etc.) in this answer. If you're only using Standard C++ and libraries available cross-platform, then there's lots of other answers.

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    winelib is a good suggestion in case the code is full of Win32-isms. But saying there's no compiler to build Linux binaries is baloney.
    – Ben Voigt
    Commented Jan 22, 2011 at 20:52
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    To build linux binaries that magically thunk out all Windows APIs? I think it's a valid statement to say there's no compiler that does that - it's not a compiler's job to get APIs from one OS to work identically on another OS.
    – Austin Lamb
    Commented Jan 22, 2011 at 20:57
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I don't believe there are any compilers that allow you to compile on Windows and then take the resulting binary and run it on a Linux machine. Your best bet is to set up two development environments, one on Windows and one on Linux. Do most of your development and debugging in the Windows environment if that's what suits you, then frequently compile and test under Linux to be sure your code is truly cross-platform. You'll also want to use a cross-platform build system and testing framework. I recommend using cmake and Google Test, respectively.

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    g++ supports an awful lot of cross and canadian cross configurations.
    – Ben Voigt
    Commented Jan 22, 2011 at 21:13
  • I would still strongly recommend setting up a cross-platform build system, then building on each of the target platforms natively. Setting up a VM is a heck of a lot easier than the crosstool-ng option described below. Not only that, but tools like CMake allow you to use VS for debugging on windows, which the OP prefers.
    – Darryl
    Commented Apr 26, 2014 at 14:16
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    This answer is wrong. There are multiple options for compiling Linux code on Windows. The biggest headache is dealing with libs. For example, a build build on cygwin may require libphp5.so of version 5.4.7 when Ubuntu may only have 5.4.8. Not a huge deal, just compile 5.4.7 on ubuntu and you'll be good, but it;s not exactly a zip-bam-boom solution.
    – JSON
    Commented Nov 12, 2014 at 21:41
  • @JSON, Although you are right that there are options I was not aware of, the example you give is not one of them. Binaries compiled for cygwin don't run in Linux. See stackoverflow.com/questions/4143629/….
    – Darryl
    Commented Nov 14, 2014 at 16:27
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    @Darryl - Android NDK is a good example of a cgywin based cross compiler that builds Linux compatible binaries on Windows. It's true that they are not standard cgywin based libs, but that's the point of any cross compiler in the end.
    – JSON
    Commented Nov 14, 2014 at 20:52

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