[Caml-list] Windows (MSVC) applications without the console window...

[Caml-list] Windows (MSVC) applications without the console window...

[Felix Winkelmann]

Hello!

(I'm new to this list, so if this has come up before,
my apologies)

I'm using OCaml 3.07 on Windows (MSVC build) and I wonder
whether it's possible to create standalone applications
that run without opening a console window. Some googling
directed me to mkwinapp (from the OCaml-Win32 distribution)
but apparently it doesn't work. I'm using Windows XP home.

Any ideas?


cheers,
felix

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Re: [Caml-list] Windows (MSVC) applications without the console window...

[Nicolas Cannasse]

> Hello!
>
> (I'm new to this list, so if this has come up before,
> my apologies)
>
> I'm using OCaml 3.07 on Windows (MSVC build) and I wonder
> whether it's possible to create standalone applications
> that run without opening a console window. Some googling
> directed me to mkwinapp (from the OCaml-Win32 distribution)
> but apparently it doesn't work. I'm using Windows XP home.
>
> Any ideas?

You need to get OCaml Win32 API from here :
http://www.speakeasy.org/~hchomsky/ocaml-win32.html
And then a simple call to free_console() will remove the console.
One other way is to hack the exe in order to change its mode from "console
application" to "win32 application". Maybe an ocaml linker option would be
nice to do that.

Regards,
Nicolas Cannasse

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Re: [Caml-list] Windows (MSVC) applications without the console window...

[Harry Chomsky]

> > I'm using OCaml 3.07 on Windows (MSVC build) and I wonder
> > whether it's possible to create standalone applications
> > that run without opening a console window. Some googling
> > directed me to mkwinapp (from the OCaml-Win32 distribution)
> > but apparently it doesn't work.

Can you be more specific about what doesn't work?  I haven't tried it with
the most recent versions of OCaml and Windows, so there may be bugs that I
don't know about.  Or you may be running into the limitations caused by
OCaml's use of a separate application for its runtime (ocamlrun.exe).  Make
sure you read and understand section 3 ("Subsystems") of the file build.txt
included with the OCaml-Win32 distribution.

> And then a simple call to free_console() will remove the console.

That might work, but I think it might look less clean than having a true
windows subsystem app.

> One other way is to hack the exe in order to change its mode from "console
> application" to "win32 application". Maybe an ocaml linker option would be
> nice to do that.

That's exactly what the "lkwinapp" and "mkwinapp" features of OCaml-Win32
do.  But again, if you read the "Subsystems" documentation mentioned above,
you will see why it might not work as well as you'd hope.

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Re: [Caml-list] Windows (MSVC) applications without the console window...

[Felix Winkelmann]

Harry Chomsky wrote:

>>>I'm using OCaml 3.07 on Windows (MSVC build) and I wonder
>>>whether it's possible to create standalone applications
>>>that run without opening a console window. Some googling
>>>directed me to mkwinapp (from the OCaml-Win32 distribution)
>>>but apparently it doesn't work.
> 
> 
> Can you be more specific about what doesn't work?  I haven't tried it with
> the most recent versions of OCaml and Windows, so there may be bugs that I
> don't know about.  Or you may be running into the limitations caused by
> OCaml's use of a separate application for its runtime (ocamlrun.exe).  Make
> sure you read and understand section 3 ("Subsystems") of the file build.txt
> included with the OCaml-Win32 distribution.

mkwinapp just appears to be ineffective on a bytecode-compiled
file. But (as I said in my followup), it works nicely with native
code compiled with ocamlopt. So it really seems to be related
to the invocation of ocamlrun (I guess),


cheers,
felix

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Re: [Caml-list] Windows (MSVC) applications without the console window...

[Xavier Leroy]

> mkwinapp just appears to be ineffective on a bytecode-compiled
> file. But (as I said in my followup), it works nicely with native
> code compiled with ocamlopt. So it really seems to be related
> to the invocation of ocamlrun (I guess),

For another example of how to build a non-console application in
bytecode, you could look at otherlibs/labltk/browser/Makefile.nt
in the OCaml source distribution.  Basically, the trick is to link as
follows:

ocamlc -custom ...  winmain.obj -cclib "/link /subsystem:windows"

when winmain.obj is obtained by compiling otherlibs/labltk/browser/winmain.c.

- Xavier Leroy

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