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Platform Independent C++ OS Library?
quench writes "Hello! I have been away from Windows and Linux application software for 5 years or so, doing mainly C-like embedded C++ programming. Now, I am about to start a project emulating embedded hardware on Windows. Been there, doing #ifdef WIN32 and #ifdef LINUX stuff, don't really want to go there any more. What I actually need is a platform independent lib covering Windows and Linux variants to handle sockets, IPC and threads abstractions. And a rock solid but simple embedded database to emulate flash memory. My reflex said, go for ACE and Berkeley-DB. Tell me, am I out of time? Am I missing something new and trendy, easier to use and better? Did time stand still?"
This platform independent lib you are looking for is called JAVA.
Nokia QT rocks...
Use Qt. It's LGPL (So it's free for commercial projects as well), is well documented and offers a ton of abstractions (including sqlite).
http://qt.nokia.com/
And tool support is excellent as well (Visual Studio Add-In, Eclipse Plugin and a standalone IDE called QtCreator).
I've used Pthreads successfully as a cross-platform threading library. http://sourceware.org/pthreads-win32 is a quite good implementation for Windows, and it's built into Linux (and all other POSIX compatible OS's, such as OS X, as well).
"I'm too busy to research this and form an educated opinion, but I do have time to tell everyone my uninformed opinion."
Intel Thread Building Blocks (http://www.threadingbuildingblocks.org/ is (are?) fantastic. Open source (GPL), works on any ISO-compliant C++ compiler and is fairly intuitive. It allows both high-level (parallel_for) and low level (task-based) parallelism. Particularly useful are the concurrent containers, since it saves you from reimplementing these basic structures.
Boost has libraries for each of these three: sockets through the ASIO library, IPC through the Interprocess library, and threads through the threads library.
http://www.boost.org
The only thing that Boost is lacking for which you asked is a database library.
Boost has pretty strong threading support, which is the basis for the threading capabilities in the forthcoming revision of the C++ standard. Boost also has cross-platform IPC and socket libraries. It would be a good choice for the OP, I think.
APR:
http://apr.apache.org/ http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apache_Portable_Runtime
Qt has been modular since ver 4, so you don't have to include the GUI components if you don't want to. The API is clean, elegant and consistent, plus the documentation is great. I don't have anything bad to say about ACE or Boost - they're both high quality toolkits - but if I had to choose just one toolkit to use for the rest of my life, it'd be Qt, hands down.
"Good people drink good beer"
If you want "close to the metal" POSIX API compatibility then there's Cygwin which is easier to use IMO and more actively developed but doesn't support the *full* POSIX spec or there is UWIN which supports most of the POSIX spec.
;) or IMNSHO preferably wxWindows/wxWidgets and you've got yourself a full cross-platform programming toolkit that can do just about anything.
Combine this with OpenGL, OpenAL, the SDL and Cygwin/X, QT, a Java layer using the SWT from Eclipse, *shudder* GLUT *shudder*
jdb2
Unfortunately all the trendy cool kids are using Java these days, and only web-based applications are worth working on if you want to keep up with the times. The days of small, simple client-server apps are over, old hat, out of date, archaic. Nowadays you need to implement a web application using AJAX, web services, Struts and Spring and Hibernate, and you have to do it using Agile methodology. If you aren't linking in at least 100 Java class libraries, you don't have a "real" application.
C++? Too simple.
By the taping of my glasses, something geeky this way passes
It's mostly because they aren't answering the OP's question, and aren't contributing any useful information to the discussion. Compare the posts above with the following:
From what I've heard, one of the best cross-platform libraries for C++ is QT, (originally developed by Trolltech, now by Nokia). It's available either open source (LGPL) or commercially, and while best known for its UI toolkit also provides an extensive library of other functions. Wikipedia has a long list of things it has been used for, and other information.
On the other hand, if you're not too wedded to C++ specifically, Java, C#, or Python might be good alternatives. Syntax-wise, C# and Java are extremely similar to C++, and all three have extensive libraries (built in) that provide the functionality you're looking for. They're also cross-platform (with C# you'd need to stick with stuff Mono can do, but that's still pretty extensive) and you don't even need to re-compile. Speed-wise, both Java and C# are nearly as fast as native code for most applications today, as are certain Python run-time environments. If you need explicit memory management for something, you can even do that with C# (although at that point it may be better to stick with C++).
There's no place I could be, since I've found Serenity...
For most cross-platform stuff, boost will do what you need. boost::thread will handle all of your threading needs.
boost::filesystem for manipulating pathnames; boost::datetime for date and time operations; boost::format for typesafe printf style I/O.
It also has boost::asio for sockets and boost::interprocess for IPC. I know nothing about them, but to judge from the quality of the rest of the boost library, they are probably very good.
For database, use Sqlite. It's a solid relational database stored in a single file, and you can even access the database from the command line for ad-hoc queries/debugging/whatever.
You say that you're writing a lot of "C-like" embedded C++. Are you doing fully OOP style coding and using 'new' and 'delete'? Or are you mostly taking advantage of conveniences like namespaces, scoped variable declarations, etc?
If your code is really more C-ish, you could take a look at the Apache Portable Runtime (http://apr.apache.org/). The APR is the library that Apache httpd is based on; they cover most system-level utilities (sockets, files, etc) you could need in a portable way. The APR is more 'C-like' in that a file descriptor is an opaque handle which you pass in to functions like apr_file_puts(), etc., rather than doing the C++ thing of file->puts()..
But if you're ok with the syntax, it's Apache licensed (corporation friendly), well tested (httpd is pretty ubiquitous after all) and actively maintained.
Yes, QT is really excellent, but it's worth it to look at Boost as well.
Want a database? Why use Berkeley when there's SQLite?
Portable sockets? QT and Boost both have them.
Portable file ops? QT and Boost both have them.
Data structures? QT has a bunch, but STL is what you should learn.
Windowing lib? QT works on both Windows and Linux. You may be tempted to use WXWidgets, but don't. Despite the fan boyz, you'll find that library to be buggy as shit, and impossible to debug. Sorry, that'll probably get me marked as a troll, but it's true.
And QT on Windows comes WITH the MinGW compiler for Windows package. You don't need to use any other tool than gcc on Linux, Mac, or Windows.
Fascism trolls keeping me up every night. When I starts a preachin', he HITS ME WITH HIS REICH!
...are ones with which I have the most experience. WxWidgets IMHO is the best 'close-to-the-metal' API, with the most available constructs to allow me to implement in C/C++ the Perl prototypes I develop. But most recently I've been noodling with Java to develop a high-availability platform, and I regularly run multiple jvms in Windows command shells to build stuff out, and then take the classes unchanged to a ttylinux-SunJRE-based cluster I run with VirtualBox.
I'm not a Java advocate by any means, but you can't ignore the portability...