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?"

Comments

Qt

[Anonymous Coward]

Nokia QT rocks...

Re:Qt

[KirstuNael]

I concur. My Qt-powered multithreaded and networked (TCP&UDP) application is compiling and working nicely in linux, osx and win32 without any os-specifc #ifdefs.

Qt

[Anonymous Coward]

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).

TBB works wonders for threading

[Wrath0fb0b]

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.

Re:Apache Portable Runtime

[boilednut]

From the wikipedia articel:

APR was originally a part of Apache HTTP Server, but has now been spun off into a separate project of the Apache Software Foundation, and is used by other applications to achieve platform independence. The range of platform-independent functionality provided by APR includes:
* Memory allocation and memory pool functionality
* Atomic operations
* Dynamic library handling
* File I/O
* Command argument parsing
* Locking
* Hash tables and arrays
* Mmap functionality
* Network sockets and protocols
* Thread, process and mutex functionality
* Shared memory functionality
* Time routines
* User and group ID services

Re:As someone working on a massive project...

[Anonymous Coward]

it is all well and good, but he cannot even read options 3,4 and 5 because of your recursion!

Sorry, C variants aren't trendy...

[CptNerd]

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.

Re:C++ is so old school...

[Profane MuthaFucka]

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.