This repository contains vcpkg support for building GNUstep on Windows and Linux.
It contains:
- vcpkg ports for building libobjc2, libdispatch, gnustep-make, gnustep-base, gnustep-gui, gnustep-back and selected dependencies
- vcpkg triplets,
x64-windows-llvmandx64-linux-llvmfor building using clang on Windows and Linux - A CMake package, gnustep, which allows applications to link with libobjc2, gnustep-base and gnustep-gui using CMake import libraries.
- A tutorial application which shows how you can use vcpkg, CMake, VS Code, CodeLLDB and clangd to get a rich Objective C editing experience on Windows
On Windows, this repository takes the approach of building GNUstep using the Windows-native LLVM (clang) compiler. While it uses MSYS2 to get a Bash shell, which allows running the scripts required to configure and build GNUstep, it does not use the MSYS2 compiler toolchain.
On Windows, you'll need to download the Windows SDK and the LLVM toolchain. Optionally, you can use Visual Studio Code as an editor and Git for source code interations.
You'll need a version of LLVM which includes support for referencing instance variables which are in an external module. In practice, that means LLVM 20.0 or later, which you can download at https://releases.llvm.org/.
To get started, run the following commands:
git clone https://github.com/qmfrederik/vcpkg-gnustep
cd vcpkg-gnustep
git clone https://github.com/microsoft/vcpkg/
./vcpkg/bootstrap-vcpkg.bat
./vcpkg/vcpkg install gnustep-gui:x64-windows-llvm --overlay-ports=ports --overlay-triplets=tripletsThis will configure GNUstep gui and all of its dependencies. You can then find the binaries, link libraries and headers
in ./vcpkg/installed/x64-windows-llvm.
To build an Objective C application on Windows (and Linux), you'll need Visual Studio Code. For the best support, install the CMake, CodeLLDB and clangd extensions.
The easiest way to explore Objective C code editing on Windows and Linux is to open the tutorial folder in VS Code. It is pre-configured and includes code editing and debugging support.
To build your own application, create a CMake project and pass the following configuration parameters when configuring your project. CMake presets are a great way to store this configuration.
| CMake variable | Description | Example |
|---|---|---|
CMAKE_TOOLCHAIN_FILE |
Set to the vcpkg toolchain file | vcpkg/scripts/buildsystems/vcpkg.cmake |
VCPKG_CHAINLOAD_TOOLCHAIN_FILE |
Set to your platform-specific toolchain file, forcing the use of Clang as the compiler | ../triplets/toolchains/x64-windows-llvm.toolchain.cmake |
VCPKG_TARGET_TRIPLET |
Set to the platform-specific triplet | x64-windows-llvm |
CMAKE_EXPORT_COMPILE_COMMANDS |
Causes CMake to generate a JSON Compilation Database, enabling clangd | ON |
Then, open VS Code and configure the CMake integration in VS Code. Clangd should automatically pick up your compiler settings and start providing editor support.
To debug your application, create a launch.json file which uses the lldb debugger. Then, you can launch and debug your application:
This repository uses Renovate to automatically check for dependency updates. The configuraiton can be found in renovate.json. Roughly, the customManagers section allows Renovate to identify which packages are being used in this project. The packageRules section defines how to get the latest version information from the upstream systems, such as GitHub.
Pay special attention to the version regular expressions, as they need to match both the version number as it appears in vcpkg.json and the tag used by the equivalent GitHub release. These can vary wildly, here are a couple of examples:
| Package | vcpkg.json |
GitHub release tag | regex |
|---|---|---|---|
| gnustep-base | 1.31.1 |
base-1_31_1 |
`^(Release |
| libdispatch | 6.1 |
swift-6.1-RELEASE |
^(swift-)?(?<major>\d+).(?<minor>\d+)(.(?<patch>\d+))?(-RELEASE)?$ |
To test Renovate, you may want to consider cloning this repository into a new repo (as to not to clutter this repo with misconfigured Renovate pull requests). Push an updated renovate.json to main of the cloned repo, and then run:
set RENOVATE_TOKEN=ghp_{your_token}
set GITHUB_COM_TOKEN=ghp_{your_token}
set LOG_LEVEL=debug
npx renovate {owner}/{repo}
Some ports should be compiled with clang-cl, which uses a msvc-compatible command line syntax.
Often, these ports fail to compile with a command-line invocation which appears to be a mix of clang and Visual C++ arguments, such as:
libtool: compile: llvm-rc.exe -DPACKAGE_VERSION_STRING=\\\"0.22.5\\\" -DPACKAGE_VERSION_MAJOR=0 -DPACKAGE_VERSION_MINOR=22 -DPACKAGE_VERSION_SUBMINOR=5 -i ./../src/gettext-0-5775b97cd5.clean/gettext-runtime/intl/libintl.rc --output-format=coff -o .libs/libintl.res.o
or
Detecting linker via: `"C:/Program Files/LLVM/bin/clang.exe" -O0 -g -Xclang -gcodeview -Wl,--version /LIBPATH:C:/Users/vagrant/Source/Repos/vcpkg-gnustep/vcpkg/installed/x64-windows-llvm/debug/lib "-fuse-ld=C:/Program Files/LLVM/bin/lld-link.exe"` -> 1
stderr:
clang: error: no such file or directory: '/LIBPATH:C:/Users/vagrant/Source/Repos/vcpkg-gnustep/vcpkg/installed/x64-windows-llvm/debug/lib'
To account for this, add the name of the port to the exception list in triplets/x64-windows-llvm.cmake.
This is a dependency of cairo but not cairo[core]. Skip this dependency by building cairo[core].
If a Meson build fails with the the following error:
FileNotFoundError: [WinError 2] The system cannot find the file specified
Then this is most likely because Meson is looking for lld-link without specifying an explicit path (mesonbuild/meson#9727).
To account for this, add the name of the port to the exception list in triplets/x64-windows-llvm.cmake.