--app:gui gives an error on osx.

[hakanderyal]

Latest devel, echo "hello world" app, no custom configuration.

# nim c --app:gui try.nim
# ...
# [Linking]
# clang: error: unknown argument: '-mwindows'
# Error: execution of an external program failed

[dom96]

What is the equivalent of -mwindows for clang? Is there one?

[refi64]

@dom96 Nothing, it seems:

http://icculus.org/pipermail/quake3-commits/2014-July/002604.html

[mjoud]

I just hit this error on Linux when building a gui app with Nim/gcc. It's pretty clear from the gcc docs that this option is available only for MinGW and Cygwin targets.

[dom96]

Looks like you are correct @mjoud. Any ideas how to achieve the same thing on Mac OS X/Linux?

[mjoud]

When I think about it, Is --app:gui necessary at all on platforms other than win? No console window opens when executing program compiled without --app:gui (by double-clicking). I rarely do gui-programming so I haven't given this any thought earlier.

[Araq]

On Mac my UI application opens a console window ...

[mjoud]

Well, at least it's not necessary on Linux (which should be documented), so we're back at the OS X issue.

[johnnovak]

Confirming the issue with nim 0.13.0 on OS X 10.11.3 (El Capitan). After removing the -mwindows flag I can compile just fine, but opening the generated executable from Finder still opens a console window.

[dom96]

I think in order to get rid of a console window on OS X you need to put your application in an App Bundle (``myProgram.app`).

[dom96]

BTW I don't think this is to do with installation.

[johnnovak]

I don't think you need to put the app inside a bundle just to prevent the console window from showing. For example, check out the glfw project—all their example applications compile to single executable files on OS X (no bundle), yet they don't open a console window when launched either from Finder or the command line.

[fredrikhr]

@PMunch and I discovered in the wxnim repo that the --app:gui also is problematic on Linux. IIRC the same error message popped up on Linux as well (@PMunch correct me if I'm wrong)

So on Linux --app:gui should simply be equivalent to --app:console (or no --app argument at all) as far as the compiler backend is concerned

[PMunch]

Yeah, I'm getting this on Linux as well. The reason for this is that Linux doesn't really differentiate between GUI and non-GUI programs as mjoud points out. So at least on Linux this flag should just not do anything.

[PMunch]

I've had a bit of a look around for compiling terminal-less GUI programs on OSX. And I'm not entirely sure what glfw does to work around this. I found someone asking about how Python does it and that's basically because it has an interpreter which is an app already. The same applies to apple-script. But for compiled programs I haven't been able to find anything but wrapping it up in a app file or a shell script like this: http://stackoverflow.com/questions/1810497/hide-console-for-tkinter-app-on-osx.

[andreaferretti]

With latest devel, this compiles fine on Mac, but opening the generated executable from Finder still opens a console window (what should it actually do, since it just echoes hello world?)