It's certainly possible to develop on a Windows machine, in fact, my first application was exclusively developed on the old Dell Precision I had at the time :)
There are three routes;
- Install OSx86 (aka iATKOS / Kalyway) on a second partition/disk and dual boot.
- Run Mac OS X Server under VMWare (Mac OS X 10.7 (Lion) onwards, read the update below).
- Use Delphi XE4 and the macincloud service. This is a commercial toolset, but the component and lib support is growing.
The first route requires modifying (or using a pre-modified) image of Leopard that can be installed on a regular PC. This is not as hard as you would think, although your success/effort ratio will depend upon how closely the hardware in your PC matches that in Mac hardware - e.g. if you're running a Core 2 Duo on an Intel Motherboard, with an NVidia graphics card you are laughing. If you're running an AMD machine or something without SSE3 it gets a little more involved.
If you purchase (or already own) a version of Leopard then this is a gray area since the Leopard EULA states you may only run it on an "Apple Labeled" machine. As many point out if you stick an Apple sticker on your PC you're probably covered.
The second option is more costly. The EULA for the workstation version of Leopard prevents it from being run under emulation and as a result, there's no support in VMWare for this. Leopard server, however, CAN be run under emulation and can be used for desktop purposes. Leopard server and VMWare are expensive, however.
If you're interested in option 1) I would suggest starting at Insanelymac and reading the OSx86 sections.
I do think you should consider whether the time you will invest is going to be worth the money you will save though. It was for me because I enjoy tinkering with this type of stuff and I started during the early iPhone betas, months before their App Store became available.
Alternatively, you could pick up a low-spec Mac Mini from eBay. You don't need much horsepower to run the SDK and you can always sell it on later if you decide to stop development or buy a better Mac.
Update: You cannot create a Mac OS X Client virtual machine for OS X 10.6 and earlier. Apple does not allow these Client OSes to be virtualized. With Mac OS X 10.7 (Lion) onwards, Apple has changed its licensing agreement in regards to virtualization. Source: VMWare KnowledgeBase
From this news group posting by Mark Zbikowski himself:
The differences between .CMD and .BAT as far as CMD.EXE is concerned
are: With extensions enabled, PATH/APPEND/PROMPT/SET/ASSOC in .CMD
files will set ERRORLEVEL regardless of error. .BAT sets ERRORLEVEL
only on errors.
In other words, if ERRORLEVEL is set to non-0 and then you run one of those commands, the resulting ERRORLEVEL will be:
- left alone at its non-0 value in a .bat file
- reset to 0 in a .cmd file.
Best Answer
In Windows, an executable is either a console application or a Windows application (or a SFU or Native application, but that doesn't matter here).
The kernel checks a flag in the executable to determine which.
When starting using
CreateProcess
WinAPI function, if it is a console application, the kernel will create a console window for it if the parent process doesn't have one, and attach theSTDIN
,STDOUT
andSTDERR
streams to the console.If it is a Windows application, no console will be created and
STDIN
,STDOUT
andSTDERR
will be closed by default.WSCRIPT.EXE
andCSCRIPT.EXE
are almost exactly identical, except that one is flagged as a windows application and the other is flagged as a console application (Guess which way around!).So the answer is: If you want your script to have a console window, use
CSCRIPT.EXE
. If you want it to NOT have a console window, useWSCRIPT.EXE
.This also affects some behaviors, such as the WScript.Echo command. In a
CSCRIPT.EXE
this writes a line to the console window. InWSCRIPT.EXE
it shows a messagebox.For your application I suggest
CSCRIPT.EXE
. I think you should also look at PuTTY and PLink, and you should also see this here: