Compiling sound softwares to Windows platform

[Thorolf]

I have heard that one can compile Open Source softwares intended for Linux (and hence also Mac OS X) on Windows using GCC compiler to produce .dll files to run natively on Windows. Anybody tried this for sound softwares?

Regards

[crimson]

Well, I have understood that it is possible to create cross-platform software on any platform. How easy it is to convert an existing Open Source software to another platform probably depends on the software's source code. If the software was coded to work on any platform from the start, then it shouldn't be too hard (it might already work on different platforms). Otherwise it might take some effort to convert the code to be cross-platform friendly (or Windows friendly if you're converting from Linux).

And about .dlls, I think that they only work on Windows. Linux does have a similar type of thing. I'm not sure what it's called on Linux, but it should be possible to compile a .dll of the program for Windows and a "Linux .dll" for Linux and so on.

Personally I have never tried to make a cross-platform program, and I'm no wizard in the subject. Perhaps Ron O. or someone else could give more information.

[Ron Ofir]

As crimson said, it really depends on the source of the software in question. Some software take nothing more than to clicks to make them run on a different platform, some are nearly impossible to port.

Regarding .dlls, they only work on Windows, unless you're using a Windows emulator such as wine (which isn't very fail-safe). They're called share objects (.so) on Linux and basically you shouldn't be making dynamic libraries/shared objects unless you know exactly what you're doing.

As for sound software, they are almost always coded with a specific platform (OS) in mind, and as such are terribly hard to port. Again, it really depends on the particular piece of software in question. Some more info about the software might help (maybe even a link?).

[Thorolf]

Thanks, crimson and Ron Ofir for your input on this. I was initially thinking about Ardour, mentioned here.



Regards

[crimson]

Hi Thorolf,

After browsing the Ardour website it seems that they're already working on a Windows release, which I think is great: thread. Ardour really does seem to be a competent program. I didn't find out wheter you can use it as a MIDI sequencer too, but I'll examine it further. I'll definitely keep that one in mind for future!

[Thorolf]

As from what I can see, just downloading the source code and compiling to Windoze just won’t work right out of the box then?

Thanks anyway!



Regards

[Ron Ofir]

Oh, Ardour. Heh, I had some fun with sometime ago. Never used it to it's full potential though, my PC wasn't strong enough. As for trying to just compile it on Windows, I would say NO!!!! Don't even try, even if you succeed after long days and months with little sleep, it would be buggy and unstable. Just wait untill the development guys think it's stable enough. Then again, they might just have a beta version done and I guess if you want to they will agree to give it to you.

[ascottk]

Some libraries the software needs might not be ported to windows. A few gtk related appliations like the Gimp have been ported. I'm not sure about the QT library library though.