Cross-compiler targeting macOS

[Jacob Carlborg]

On 2021-04-07 17:27, Guillaume Piolat wrote:

> Dumb question maybe but: in what use cases should this be used?

I don't know, ask H. S. Teoh :D.

I know some people have asked for it. I did it mostly because I knew how 
to do it and do it properly. I general I don't see the point to 
cross-compile (unless it's required, like mobile an embedded), because 
it seems like people want to use cross-compiling because they don't have 
the target system. But eventually you need to test the result and then 
you do need the target system to be able to run it. But perhaps if you 
target Windows you can then use Wine to run the executable. Seem to be 
something similar for macOS [1]. But if you can run the result using 
Wine you should be able to run the compiler using Wine as well. Perhaps 
it's less of a hassle to cross-compile, I don't know.

If you're targeting Linux on non-native architectures you can use qemu. 
Seems pretty easy if you have a statically linked binary and use qemu 
user emulation.

There's also free public CI services that target macOS, no need to 
cross-compile and it can run the code as well.

I did have a use case at my previous job. The production systems were 
running Linux but all developers were using macOS. We created a custom 
tool for the developers, which then needed to target macOS. It was a GUI 
application so Docker wasn't an option. We only had access to Linux CI 
runners so I used cross-compiling. It couldn't test the result, but at 
least it could build it and publish it. That's when I setup the first 
incarnation of this project [2]. In this new incarnation, I've fixed the 
main problem of the first incarnation: reproducibility.

[1] https://www.darlinghq.org
[2] https://github.com/jacob-carlborg/docker-ldc-darwin

-- 
/Jacob Carlborg