Use GCC on Linux to cross-compile Qt apps for Windows

Question

Ideally, I want to compile our QT-based apps, which also link other third-party libraries, on 64-bit Linux using GCC, but for a 64-bit Windows target. Again ideally, I want the result to run on 64-bit Windows without any additional runtime support, just as if we had compiled the same source code in Visual Studio. Is this possible with MinGW-w64?

I have successfully used MinGW-w64 to compile simple apps with GCC on Windows. I'm not sure how much of the MinGW-w64 installation is runtime support for executables as opposed to support for the GCC compilation environment. I did attempt to run a WinGW-w64 hello world executable on an installation of Windows without MinGW-w64, but had missing dll errors. This tells me that some runtime support was necessary, but I would like to know more precisely what is required.

Answer 1

If you don't want to install Windows, I think the best way is using a Virtual Machine. That's because even if the source code compiles for Windows, how could it be verified to run? You will need a real target environment to finally test your application.

From a complexity point of view, I think setting up a Windows machine (VM or not) and the necessary environment for Qt is a whole lot simpler than cross compiling bug hunting afterwards.

You can install Qt on the installed Windows, copy your project there, compile it and see the results in the real environment. This way you can cope with the minor differences when porting from one OS to another easily.

Nothing stops you from developing on Linux. You can do the entire development on Linux and just test the code on the prepared Windows by compiling and running. Sending the code to the Windows environment is simple by using git. The development process can be like :

• Make a repository of your application, clone the repository both on Linux and Windows
• Do the Major development on Linux and push
• Pull on Windows from time to time, compile, test and make minor fixes and then push