C++ GUI For Linux, looking for a place to start

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First off I'm still pretty new to C++ programming (only been using it for the past 6 - 9 months) and before that I was a VB and then C# programmer. All in all been doing this for about 8 years total (though I had a 4 year break in there). The company I work for is in the process of updating 10+ year old code (vb, and C++ MFC mostly). The initial push will be keeping with M$, but there seems to be thought of moving over to Linux for more than our File and Mail Server.
So, I was wondering if anyone could point me in the direction of some decent books on C++ GUI programming for Linux. Call me old, but I'm a book guy and I do enough reading from a screen all day. I've found a few that look promising for learning the basics of it from the Linux stand point rather than the M$, so I think I'm good there. Unless of course someone knows of a really good foundation book, then by all means.
Thanks in advance!

Posted 15-Jun-11 4:57am

MacRaider4

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Solution 2

As a far-away alternative, you can use .NET and/or Mono on Windows and Mono on Linux to make cross-platform applications running without recompilation, see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mono_(software)[^], http://www.mono-project.com/[^].

For IDE on Linux you can use MonoDevelop, see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MonoDevelop[^], http://monodevelop.com/[^].

For C++ development on Linux, you can use Open Source Anjuta IDE, see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anjuta[^], http://www.anjuta.org/[^].

—SA

Posted 15-Jun-11 15:48pm

Sergey Alexandrovich Kryukov

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MacRaider4 16-Jun-11 8:34am

Well everything is currently in MFC C++ from VS 6.0 right now, and we are about 5% of the way into a VS2010 (update, that isn't impressing too many of us at the moment). Plus with the way M$ is going these days we are thinking that maybe making the move to Linux isn't a bad thing (over 90% of all the software we use is made by us, the other 10% is basically Office).

MacRaider4 16-Jun-11 8:35am

Actually not everything, of the applications we are re-writing about 20% of those are VB 6.

Sergey Alexandrovich Kryukov 17-Jun-11 3:52am

Well, VB6 code should be dumped asap, rewritten, MFC too. This is why one of the most important principle is to isolate UI part from functionality as much as possible -- UI tend to change. It it is not isolated, it's very painful.

May be Mono is not such a remote option? It supports System.Windows.Forms which is closely built on top of Windows API and follow many conceptions. I run my .NET application on Linux without recompilation, even with Forms.
--SA

MacRaider4 17-Jun-11 7:36am

I haven't had much time to look into Mono or try it (we are moving here at work next week so are a bit busy). I was looking at the site though, and you have to pay for it? (or was I looking at the wrong thing? due to the move our boss isn't into spending extra money right now).

I think once we move and get settled in, we should finally have some decent time to put towards this project.

As far as isolating functionality from the UI, I've been trying to do that as much of possible with my re-writes. Though it is hard to get in the habit of doing things that way after so years many of doing it the VB 6 way (for lack of a better term (that's where I started VB 5/6)).

Sergey Alexandrovich Kryukov 17-Jun-11 13:43pm

Oh gosh, of course you don't pay for it, it's all open source.
First of all, CLR, C# and C++/CLI are standardized under ECMA and ISO, obtaining standards is free. Mono also implement non-standard Microsoft .NET libraries, but not all. (There is no WPF, pity.)
--SA

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Albert Holguin · Accepted Answer · 2011-06-15T05:01:00

Solution 1

Look into using the Qt framework, its a popular multiplatform framework that's backed by Nokia (always good to have big backer).

Of course, there's other frameworks that are out there as well.
- wxWidgets (modeled after MFC, meant for transitioning MFC code)
- GTK

...and I'm sure you can find even more on the internet.

Posted 15-Jun-11 5:01am

Albert Holguin

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MacRaider4 15-Jun-11 11:19am

So Qt isn't just for phones then? I saw Nokia and got a little worried.

Albert Holguin 15-Jun-11 11:29am

No, a lot of Linux was written in Qt (before Nokia) but there was some license conflicts and then people started to transition to GTK, but it seems that Nokia is actually taking steps to ease up on licensing terms.

Sergey Alexandrovich Kryukov 15-Jun-11 21:42pm

Ha-ha, your can use Qt even on Windows and create well-portable applications!
--SA

MacRaider4 15-Jun-11 12:14pm

Thanks for the info, I guess I'll look through the reviews on Amazon, cross my fingers and hope for the best.
As a side note, so something I write in Qt for Linux (lets say an application to update new employee information that a Manger could use vs me doing it directly on the server), I could also use that on windows, just have to create a different exe/install of it?

Sergey Alexandrovich Kryukov 15-Jun-11 21:44pm

You can write application portable between Linux and Windows (with re-compilation) with Qt or GTK+.
With .NET on Windows and Mono on Linux you can run .NET Applications on Linux (and visa versa) without recompilation! (Some limitation apply.)
--SA

Albert Holguin 16-Jun-11 11:45am

why reviews on amazon? ...anyway, yes, you can use same Qt source on either windows or linux but it does require recompilation... as SA pointed out, interpreted code doesn't require recompilation (java, .net) but it really depends on what you're doing. read up on your options and make an educated decision.

MacRaider4 16-Jun-11 12:13pm

From the sounds of it, we'd be writing this for a Windows environment with the goal of moving to Linux in the future. There are really only two of us doing all the programming work, so this is going to take some time.
Though I do think with wine we were able to get our "main" application to run on Ubuntu last year, but it required something for the database connections which we had a trial for (and of course that ran out). I don't remember exactaly what it was but there was some excitement about that. So hopefully I'll get my workstation up and running in a week or so and install Qt and see how it goes.
Thanks for the info guys!

Albert Holguin 16-Jun-11 13:45pm

Wine itself is a bit of pain to work with... so if I had a chance to do start something from scratch, I'd probably start off on the right foot and go multi-platform framework.

MacRaider4 16-Jun-11 13:51pm

That's the plan here... plus I'm sure in the process of re-writing thousands of hours of code, we'll come across some things we can do better and will have a lot more re-use than there currently is. And as a result it won't be thousands of hours of re-writes.

Albert Holguin 16-Jun-11 14:29pm

good luck! ...happy coding... :)

MacRaider4 17-Jun-11 7:37am

It's always happy coding... well until you are in the middle of something, get interrupted and then forget what you were going to do... then it's angry coding :-)

Sergey Alexandrovich Kryukov 15-Jun-11 21:48pm

My 5 for this answer.
I also added mine, please see.
--SA