Experimental Physics and
Industrial Control System

"Ernest L. Williams Jr." <[email protected]> · Tue, 11 Oct 2005 10:43:52 -0400

On Tue, 2005-10-11 at 16:25 +0200, Jens Eden wrote:
> Mark,
> 
> it is possible to link applications compiled with MinGW to
> dll-Files compiled with MS Visual Studio.
> So in theory it is possible to link your MinGW/QT-Application to Epics
> base compiled with MS Visual C++.
No it is not.  We have already gone down this path.  We are dealing with
C++ code and the compiler that you use for building EPICS BASE must be
the same when working with Qt.

We built EPICS BASE with MS C++ and tried to link EPICS libraries with
the GPLd version of Qt which uses MinGW only; did not work. 

Everything works perfect with the commercial of Qt and MS C++

Running with GNU compiler on linux and MAC was perfect.
Windows is always the problem child.  Now if we can get EPICS built with
the MinGW toolchain we are in business for the GPLd version of Qt.

> In practice you get a lot of errors from MinGW, when including Epics
> include-files and you cant' use modules which don't compile with
> MS Visual C++ (e.g. asyn).
> I don't know, if the GPLed version of QT can easily be compiled with
> the free Microsoft Visual C++ Compiler, but this could be an option too.
No it cannot. Trolltech only supports MS C++ in the commercial version
of Qt.

The following is the verbage from Trolltech:
====================================================================================
Entry number: 389 - Why is there no support for Microsoft Visual Studio
compilers in your Windows Open Source Edition?
Answer:
There are two main reasons. We want our Open Source Edition to support
an Open Source compiler. The logical choice then is to support the
Windows version of gcc, MinGW. The second reason is that we need to
balance our need for sustainable business with our want to support Open
Source. We are releasing the full Qt API and set of tools as Open Source
on Windows, so there is no difference in the available product. All Open
Source developers have access to MinGW. We believe that support for
Microsoft compilers is one area where we can meaningfully differentiate
between commercial and Open Source use.
====================================================================================

> The combination of QT and Eclipse with the C/C++-Plugin gives a very
> nice cross-platform development tool, which could make it a candidate
> for Epics Office.
What do you mean here? That you would only use Eclipse for its IDE?

Thanks,
Ernest L. Williams Jr.
SNS Control Systems Group
ORNL

> 
> Jens
> 
> 
> Mark Davis wrote:
> > Hi,
> >  
> > Has anyone done any work with Trolltech's Qt cross-platform classes and 
> > EPICS Channel Access?
> >  
> > I am about to begin development of a set of EPICS client applications 
> > using Qt so the applications can be compiled and run on workstations 
> > running Windows, Linux, and MacOS.  I have done some poking around, and 
> > so far have failed to turn up any mention of use of the Channel Access 
> > libraries with Qt.
> >  
> > Have I overlooked something obvious?  Anyone know of any effort on this 
> > front?  Seems unlike I am the first to work on this.
> >  
> > Thanks in advance for any info.
> >  
> > --------------------------------------------------------
> > Mark Davis, [email protected] <mailto:[email protected]>
> > Control Systems Software Engineer
> > National Superconducting Cyclotron Lab, MSU
> >  
> 

Experimental Physics and Industrial Control System

Experimental Physics and
Industrial Control System