Making Executable C++ file user friendly so someone can run it like an app or software

Question

I wrote a small c++ program to help a family member to automate some of their functions. How can I send it to them and give them ability to run it as if it was an app or at least without them having to run it in terminal (using ./a.out) and/or write command lines?

Basically where they would just click on a file and it will run with the prompts right away.

Answer 1

You will need to know the runtime environment of your family member's pc. So mainly operating system and cpu architecture. Than porting your application can be achieved by cross-compiling.

For example take a look into the mingw-w64 toolchain to cross-compile to windows (as I assume that you are on linux).

However, I would advise to move to any interpreted languages such as Python or to Java which runs in their own environment that doesn't need cross-compiling to other machines! Depending on your application this can be a lot easier.

Answer 2

It's hard to know your exact need, maybe all you want is to compile your code to an executable:

c++ main.cpp -o SomeApp

Now, it creates an executable, and you can simply double click it to run.

---

If you actually want an app with some GUI running on Mac, you can still create one quite easily with Xcode. When you open Xcode, you can select the template macOS->App, and select SwiftUI for interface, and it should automatically create couple files, and have the file named ContentView opened for you.

On the left, you will see a file navigator, and you can drag your a.out file in there to have it included in the project. On the right is the template code:

struct ContentView: View {
    var body: some View {
        Text("Hello World")
        .padding()
    }
}

All you need is to change the line with Text to:

Button("Run")
{
    try! Process.run(URL(fileURLWithPath: "/bin/zsh"), arguments: [
        "-c", Bundle.main.path(forResource: "a", ofType: "out")!
    ])
}

This will create a button that runs a.out through zsh upon clicked:

---

However, this is unlikely to satisfy all your needs. Depends on your exact need, you might need to learn a lot more about SwiftUI and application design in general to create an effective app.