Cross-Platform GUI Development

[jshriver]

I'm working on a program I hope to release as open source (non-engine). What do you all recommend as a cross-platform SDK?

My main goal is that I want to work as little as possible doing #ifdef for linux vs win vs os x.

I've used Qt years ago on Linux and enjoyed it, but wasn't entirely sure of the licensing or ease of use migrating a source tree to recompile in Windows.

Tempted to learn Java and just use Swing. The app isn't very demanding graphically.

Thanks in advance!
-Josh

[JuLieN]

I'm working on a program I hope to release as open source (non-engine). What do you all recommend as a cross-platform SDK?

My main goal is that I want to work as little as possible doing #ifdef for linux vs win vs os x.

I've used Qt years ago on Linux and enjoyed it, but wasn't entirely sure of the licensing or ease of use migrating a source tree to recompile in Windows.

Tempted to learn Java and just use Swing. The app isn't very demanding graphically.

Thanks in advance!
-Josh

Nothing is simpler than QT Creator. You write once and compile for Windows/OSX/Linux. But you have to distribute QT's runtime, which is quite big.

[JuLieN]

I'm working on a program I hope to release as open source (non-engine). What do you all recommend as a cross-platform SDK?

My main goal is that I want to work as little as possible doing #ifdef for linux vs win vs os x.

I've used Qt years ago on Linux and enjoyed it, but wasn't entirely sure of the licensing or ease of use migrating a source tree to recompile in Windows.

Tempted to learn Java and just use Swing. The app isn't very demanding graphically.

Thanks in advance!
-Josh

Actually, something is simplerand more cross-platforms than QT Creator : Lazarus. If you know some pascal.
Website: http://www.lazarus.freepascal.org/
I didn't think about mentioning it first, because I assumed you wanted to stick to C/C++. But if you're considering Java then you should definitely consider Lazarus. Arena, for instance, is written in Object Pascal with Lazarus.

[Steve Maughan]

And FireMonkey, which is also Delphi / Pascal based. This would enable you to create a GUI for Win32 / Win64 / OSx / iOS and soon Android, all from the same code base

Steve

[Daniel Shawul]

Use Java. It is just so easy to avoid all platform dependent code. It makes a lot of things so easy that I did a lot of things with it in one month. My cross-platform GUI developed with Java is so awesome I don't really know why no one uses it.
You can broadcast games with it like TLCV, it can act like a server like FICS, you can use it as a fast-tester like cutechess-cli (dos mode), or GUI mode like Winboard, it can be integrated into a webpage directly, can be used as a client to view gazillion games at the same time like BabasChess, you can play games between two chess engines, two checkers engines, three chess engines, two chess engines and a human, two aliens... Maybe it is just too much for some here, but Java is flexible like a rubber

[jdart]

Java is certainly portable and you can a reasonable UI with it. I think Swing is not very popular these days. It was never that easy to use (in particular, layout of controls/dialogs is a real pain). In addition to Swing, there is the SWT toolkit used by the Eclipse project.

IMO Qt is also a reasonable option. I don't think there is a licensing issue. If you are building an open source app you can use the GPL licensed version (if you are ok with GPL).

Adobe AIR is another option. It is a proprietary environment but as far as I can tell the runtime is freely distributable.

--Jon

[velmarin]

Nothing is simpler than QT Creator. You write once and compile for Windows/OSX/Linux. But you have to distribute QT's runtime, which is quite big.

And Android, QT now also for Android.

Use Java. It is just so easy to avoid all platform dependent code.
e4ct,ect.
I but Java is flexible like a rubber

FIDE Arena is Java,
Impressive how it works.

[smrf]

Embarcadero's Firemonkey also could be used with C++ Builder.

And there are other multi platform development systems based
on the language BASIC: Xojo http://www.xojo.com/index.php
and PureBasic http://www.purebasic.fr/english/, which
moreover uses embedded 32 Bit / 64 Bit Assembler if need be.