RPGDX > Forums > Design and programming > Porting to Mac

Jihgfed Pumpkinhead · Posted: Fri Jul 11, 2003 9:04 pm Post subject: Porting to Mac

Now that I've actually finished something, how would I go about getting it ported to Mac? Anyone know?

If you turn this into a "Macs suXXOr, PCs roXXOr" thread, DrunkenCoder will slap you with his new, God-like power.

Thanks for any suggestions.

BigManJones · Scholar Joined: 22 Mar 2003 Posts: 196

I don't know what lib you used but if you used Allegro or SDL then merely

1. Obtain a Mac + Compiler
2. Obtain the Mac port of the lib
3. Compile

:P

(I love being a smart-arse!)

EDIT:
Seriously, this is the reason why if I ever truly attempt to make money from shareware games I will develope on a Mac for the Mac with SDL because the Mac is where the money is at in shareware games.

Jihgfed Pumpkinhead · Posted: Sat Jul 12, 2003 12:03 am Post subject: Cross-Compiling to Mac

What I was really hoping for was some kind of cross-compilation (that's what they call it, right?). I'm pretty sure there's some fancy software gizmo I could get so that my MingW can compile Unix executables; is there something like that for Mac? And if not, assuming I can trick someone into letting me use his computer, what's a good (free) compiler?

By the way, I'm taking about the old Macs, not the new ones which are running that Unix OS (forgive me, I don't know any of the proper names).

Rainer Deyke · Demon Hunter Joined: 05 Jun 2002 Posts: 672

After having looked around some, I've come to the conclusion that there are no good compilers for old Macs, free or otherwise. Metrowerks CodeWarrior might be your best bet. There's also MPW, but that's a complete joke.

BigManJones · Scholar Joined: 22 Mar 2003 Posts: 196

Or you could program in Java; its not COMPLETELY offensive. The newest versions are actually quite fast and you get "hardware accelerated full screen rendering!!!" (tm)

To me, the main problem with Java and games is the fact that 1. MS doesn't support it meaning users must download a ~15MB plugin of the latest JRE and 2. The lag at startup when the vm loads gives the appearance of slowness.

CPU's are so fast nowadays you can get decent performance even from the old AWT 1.1 stuff.

And the syntax is almost identical to c++ and there are no pointers.

DrunkenCoder · Demon Hunter Joined: 29 May 2002 Posts: 559

Well assuming that you're using allegro it probably won't be very easy since allegro itself isn't supported on pre Darwin / MacOS X
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golrien · Posted: Sat Jul 12, 2003 10:21 pm Post subject:

GCC can undoubtedly output code for macs, all (haha, all) you need to do is build a cross compiler. It's not an easy thing to do, especially if you don't have a decent set of UNIX tools around... here's a rough guide, but I'm sure there's more detailed documents online.

First, you download the GCC sources from ftp.gnu.org (or a mirror). I don't know exactly what you'll need, but it'll certainly include binutils, gcc-core and probably g++.. there may well be a neat but huge package you can get with the source for all of them. You also need a UNIX environment.. I'm guessing you're running MS windows, so either get a Cygwin install or Mingw's MSYS... never tried MSYS and I wouldn't be surprised if it can't take the whole GCC build script, so if you've got the bandwidth, go with cygwin.

Then you untar the GNU sources, give some of the documents a skim, and follow the instructions. In a nutshell, you go cd .., mkdir gcc-ppc-macos or some such, run ./configure with the right flags, make and then make install.

It's only really a matter of hours before your new GCC is ready :) Then you'll build SDL and your game for MacOS, and if you have any sense at all, get someone with a proper mac to test it :)

Like I said, a bit of googling will probably turn up a way better reference to building a cross-compiler (I know for a fact there used to be one online), but I'm too lazy to do all that for you :)

Rainer Deyke · Demon Hunter Joined: 05 Jun 2002 Posts: 672

I remember looking for a (pre-OS X) Macintosh port of gcc and finding nothing. Is there really such a thing?

Jihgfed Pumpkinhead · Posted: Sun Jul 13, 2003 2:20 am Post subject: More Porting Stuff

Thanks, golrien, if I can get it to work, that sounds like exactly the sort of thing I've been looking for. I'll start googling away now. Just to make sure I'm not going off on a wild goose chase, we are talking about the same thing, right: old-school MacOS, not new-school OS-X?

DrunkenCoder · Demon Hunter Joined: 29 May 2002 Posts: 559

Well if you're going to use SDL and the old school macs you'll need either MPW (Apples free compiler) or CodeWarrior.
For MacOS-X there's an apple port of GCC that gives ~40% speed gain over the plain vanilla sources in some cases.

Good luck to ya!
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If there's life after death there is no death, if there's no death we never live. | ENTP