How to compile executable for Windows with GCC with Linux Subsystem?

Question

Windows 10 Anniversary Update includes the Linux Subsystem for Ubuntu. I installed gcc with sudo apt-get install gcc.

I wrote some simple C code for testing purposes:

#include <stdio.h>
int main(void){
    printf("Hello\n");
    return 0;
}

And compiled it with gcc -c main.c but the execute (Linux only) main.o is generated. If I run it ./main.o, it displays Hello.

My question is, how can I compile main.c so that Windows can run it? Basically, how do you generate a *.exe file with GCC in Linux Subsystem ?

Datura

compile Windows exe...aren't they already executable? – Retrieval

Your question is (to me at least) a bit unclear. Can you provide more information outlining why what you get is different from what you expected. Note also that by passing the -c option to the compiler you are explicitly telling it to perform the compilation step only -- and to not produce an executable by linking. – Eburnation

@Eburnation If I want to get the * .exe file should I just make so gcc -o main.exe main.c ? The fact is that when I do it and try to ran this output file main.exe I got this i.imgur.com/NUDCslM.jpg – Datura

Did you try to run it inside or outside of Linux Subsystem? – Autogenous

@MarkusLaire I try to run it with double click on file – Datura

So. If even more specifically. I am wondering how to compile with gcc under a specific platform – Datura

Try to run it from command-line inside linux subsystem with ./main.exe. If that works, then it seems that you might have linux executable, not windows. – Autogenous

@MarkusLaire yes, it's work in linux subsystem. but how can I compile specifically for the windows platform? – Datura

Since this seems to be fully linux system, you would need a cross-compiler to compile windows executable in linux. – Autogenous

Let us continue this discussion in chat. – Autogenous

Use a cross-platform compiler – Johst

Try gcc -Wall -g main.c -o myprog (this produces a Linux ELF executable) then run ./myprog – Joel

It seems to me that OP wants to use gcc in LSW as a kind of cross-compiler to output a Windows PE format executable rather than an ELF executable. That way you could run it from a Command Prompt and not just from LSW bash. It's an interesting question and should be doable. – Cashbox

Answer 1

Linux Subsystem works as a Linux-computer. You can only run Linux executables inside it and default gcc creates Linux executables.

To create Windows executables, you need to install mingw cross-compiler:

sudo apt-get install mingw-w64

Then you can create 32-bit Windows executable with:

i686-w64-mingw32-gcc -o main32.exe main.c

And 64-bit Windows executable with:

x86_64-w64-mingw32-gcc -o main64.exe main.c

Note that these Windows executables will not work inside Linux Subsystem, only outside of it.

Autogenous

The man page for gcc seems to imply that there are some options for making Windows console and windowed exes. Is there any reason why they wouldn't work? -mconsole -mwindows – Cimbura

I don't have much experience with creating Windows apps, so I don't know the details of those compiler options. Still those Windows-specific options will only work with *-mingw32-gcc compilers and not default gcc which is creating Linux executables. – Autogenous

It seems like x86_64-w64-mingw32-gcc is changed such that it is designed to use the windows C runtime (MSVCRT.DLL) and other core Windows libraries instead of the standard C libs gcc links (presumably whatever is in /lib?). – Cimbura

it seems to work but how can compile the file to .exe if the .c needs a .txt file as parameter – Idolla

I doubt this is exactly correct. It says you "need to" use mingw. Surely that's only one option. GCC is famously supposed to be able to cross-compile between anything so surely it can also cross-compile x86-PE on an x86-ELF system? I don't know how to do it but it seems shocking if it's impossible. – Cashbox

Would there be any advantage to using mingw over cygwin? I was trying to avoid either. – Jean

Thanks, it's working. Sadly there are no documentation for mingw-w64. @MarkusLaire is there any man pages for mingw-w64? I couldn't find any. – Liegnitz

@YGautomo I've used mingw only for simple things and for me gcc docs have been enough: gcc.gnu.org/onlinedocs – Autogenous

Answer 2

If you compile using gcc on linux it will produce an ELF file not a PE (what windows understand) file

To compile a program for windows inside linux you can use mingw.

Plagiarize

How to use mingw to compile cpp file to exe – Jacal