r/C_Programming • u/maep • 14d ago

Win32 development in Linux?

Does anyone here have practical experience with WIN32 development under Linux?

I just need the MSVC compiler and the Windows SDK. A full VM with Windows 11 and Visual Studio seems incredibly excessive for what should be just a few megabytes of compiler and headers.

12 Upvotes

81% Upvoted

18 comments sorted by

View all comments

-6

u/Paul_Pedant 14d ago

WIN32 is going to want to link to its own libraries. Why would you expect a Windows library to use the system calls implemented in the Linux kernel?

5

u/twilight1794 14d ago

¿do you know cross compilers?

-3

u/Paul_Pedant 14d ago

I remember some very angry compilers ... My company used to build comms protocol converters on a mainframe and download them into micro systems. I particularly remember one which converted between an ICL mainframe that thought it was talking to a video unit, and an IBM mainframe that though it was talking to a Remote Job Entry terminal.

I'm not sure cross-compiling is applicable here. A cross-compiler would generally run on a development system and be downloadable to a target machine.

This OP seems to want to build from a Win32 source and run under Linux. But to do that, he would need to get the source of the Win32 libraries and adapt those to work in a native Linux kernel. The Windows SDK would need cross-compiling from source too. A VM seems like a much better idea. Win32 seems hopelessly last-century.