I'm doing a (free) backup system (just a hobby, won't be big and professional like dropbox) for PC, Mac and Linux. This has been brewing since april, and is starting to get ready.
To me the choice was between C# or C++, but I ultimately chose C++, because while C# is much faster to code in, when there is a problem, coding directly against the OS, I have much more control in what actually happens and in what dependencies I really have.
Edit:
I also must confess that I'm enamored with the idea of having a comparatively tiny executable without any other runtime dependencies than itself and the OS.
For build system I use meson, and cross compile the Windows targets. It works from Windows XP through Windows 10. (If you have any 32-bit version of Windows, you get the "32 bit XP" version. If you have 64 bit but it's older than Vista, you also get the "32 bit version".)
I assume this is a command-line application? c++ does have a cross-platform GUI problem, unless you pay for the Qt license that is, which is itself a heavy ecosystem to master.
No, it's a GUI application. There are ways of making the GUI parts cross platform, like webview and such. But the GUI parts in this application are native to the OS. "Only" the core functionality is shared between platforms.
This is also something I have been battling with in the past. All the cross GUI platforms have their quirks and problems and varying OS dependencies you are then married to. Since this is my own personal project, I decided cut the knot differently and just do the GUI parts native.
So far, I have found it be incredibly liberating. Instead of trying to instinctively shoe-horn functionality into something that will fit on all platforms, the code itself becomes much clearer when all the really "abstract" or "logic" code is completely separate from the platform code.
This is of course best practice anyway, but the decision to split this way made separation incredibly obvious. When the "logic" parts code cannot communicate with OS resources, you aren't tempted to put stuff where it doesn't belong.
Very interesting. May I ask was what your approach is wrt the Mac GUI: are you going to use XCode's GUI builder or rather build a fully programmatic GUI (that is creating View Controllers, etc. by hand in Objective-C++ )?
Have no direct experience myself but I intuitively find the latter approach more appealing. I have seen examples of it here and there.
then i will have to know how to do GUI natively on mac, windows and gtk/linux, not easy to do them all.
for GUI(not gaming GUI like imgui, I just do normal GUI with widgets) cross platform I "shamelessly" do electron, for non-GUI I'm all the way with c++.
To me the choice was between C# or C++, but I ultimately chose C++, because while C# is much faster to code in, when there is a problem, coding directly against the OS, I have much more control in what actually happens and in what dependencies I really have.
Edit:
I also must confess that I'm enamored with the idea of having a comparatively tiny executable without any other runtime dependencies than itself and the OS.
For build system I use meson, and cross compile the Windows targets. It works from Windows XP through Windows 10. (If you have any 32-bit version of Windows, you get the "32 bit XP" version. If you have 64 bit but it's older than Vista, you also get the "32 bit version".)