New post about cross-compiling
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Greg Hellings
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---
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title: "Sword Windows Cross Build 20241018"
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date: 2024-10-18T11:05:36-05:00
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draft: false
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---
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*[TL;DR](#tldr)* Just let me download it
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I have been trying to come up with a good, reliable way to build executables for
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Windows from Linux for a long time. One of the longer running problems I have had
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is that the ground keeps shifting out from under me. Sometimes, you've got exactly
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the set of requirements that you need, and that's all you want! But, when I have
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previously used things like the [MinGW](https://sourceforge.net/projects/mingw-w64/)
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toolchain from [Fedora](https://fedoraproject.org/) - I would have had to
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freeze the exact machine I was building on in order to be able to reproduce the
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same results as before. But, of course, this is not a feasible thing to do, especially
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for an open source project that is leveraging CI.
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Of course, [Nix](https://nixos.org) came along and has largely solved the problem of
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pinning an entire system of libraries, executables, and compilers. But I had never
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dived into how to use its pinning power to create a cross compile result. Well, it
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turns out that it was simpler than I had thought. So I went about compiling my
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favorite cross-build library for Windows from my Linux host. That library it
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[The SWORD Project](https://www.crosswire.org/sword), available in NixPkgs as just
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the package name "sword".
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To build Sword for Linux hosts, all you need to do is go to a Linux machine with
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Nix already installed (I use NixOS, but it can be installed on basically any distribution
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of Linux) and invoke the command: `nix build "nixpkgs#sword`. Provided you have
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nixpkgs setup as a flake and you have the nix command and flakes enabled (these are
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pretty common options on systems), you will end up with a symlink in your current
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directory named `result`. You can then run any of the tools from SWORD by invoking
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them like anything else you would call. `./result/bin/diatheke`, for instance, gives
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you the diatheke command from SWORD.
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But how do you cross compile it? Well, that is already thought out for you! You just
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need to invoke `nix build "nixpkgs#pkgsCross.mingwW64.sword`. pkgsCross has quite
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a few targets available to you. `mingwW64` is the one that corresponds to Windows for
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x86\_64 architectures. It also has an older target for 32-bit Windows machines, as
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well as other targets for building. If you are interested, trying using nix repl to
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eplore:
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```
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nix repl
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>>> :lf nixpkgs
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>>> legacyPackages.x86_64-linux.pkgsCross
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```
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### BUT....
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Was it relaly that simple to build SWORD binaries for Windows from my NixOS machine
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the first time? Of course not. The SWORD package is tagged as only supporting Unix-based
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or adjacent systems. So I could have compiled for BSDs, Linux on ARM, PPC, RISC-V,
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and more. But I got an error message the first time I tried to build for Windows, that
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looked something like this:
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```
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error:
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… in the condition of the assert statement
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at /nix/store/lryfc8mhk1czqsa421di2y5nzz5c3b8m-source/lib/customisation.nix:365:17:
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364| in commonAttrs // {
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365| drvPath = assert condition; drv.drvPath;
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| ^
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366| outPath = assert condition; drv.outPath;
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… while evaluating the attribute 'handled'
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at /nix/store/lryfc8mhk1czqsa421di2y5nzz5c3b8m-source/pkgs/stdenv/generic/check-meta.nix:507:7:
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506| # or, alternatively, just output a warning message.
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507| handled =
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| ^
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508| (
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(stack trace truncated; use '--show-trace' to show the full trace)
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error: Package ‘sword-1.9.0’ in /nix/store/lryfc8mhk1czqsa421di2y5nzz5c3b8m-source/pkgs/by-name/sw/sword/package.nix:49 is not available on the requested hostPlatform:
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hostPlatform.config = "x86_64-w64-mingw32"
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package.meta.platforms = [
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"i686-cygwin"
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"x86_64-cygwin"
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"x86_64-darwin"
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"i686-darwin"
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"aarch64-darwin"
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"armv7a-darwin"
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"i686-freebsd"
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"x86_64-freebsd"
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"x86_64-solaris"
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"aarch64-linux"
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"armv5tel-linux"
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"armv6l-linux"
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"armv7a-linux"
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"armv7l-linux"
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"i686-linux"
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"loongarch64-linux"
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"m68k-linux"
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"microblaze-linux"
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"microblazeel-linux"
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"mips-linux"
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"mips64-linux"
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"mips64el-linux"
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"mipsel-linux"
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"powerpc64-linux"
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"powerpc64le-linux"
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"riscv32-linux"
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"riscv64-linux"
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"s390-linux"
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"s390x-linux"
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"x86_64-linux"
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"aarch64-netbsd"
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"armv6l-netbsd"
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"armv7a-netbsd"
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"armv7l-netbsd"
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"i686-netbsd"
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"m68k-netbsd"
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"mipsel-netbsd"
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"powerpc-netbsd"
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"riscv32-netbsd"
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"riscv64-netbsd"
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"x86_64-netbsd"
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"i686-openbsd"
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"x86_64-openbsd"
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"x86_64-redox"
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]
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package.meta.badPlatforms = [ ]
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, refusing to evaluate.
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a) To temporarily allow packages that are unsupported for this system, you can use an environment variable
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for a single invocation of the nix tools.
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$ export NIXPKGS_ALLOW_UNSUPPORTED_SYSTEM=1
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Note: When using `nix shell`, `nix build`, `nix develop`, etc with a flake,
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then pass `--impure` in order to allow use of environment variables.
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b) For `nixos-rebuild` you can set
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{ nixpkgs.config.allowUnsupportedSystem = true; }
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in configuration.nix to override this.
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c) For `nix-env`, `nix-build`, `nix-shell` or any other Nix command you can add
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{ allowUnsupportedSystem = true; }
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to ~/.config/nixpkgs/config.nix.
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```
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That's a WHOLE lot of text to tell me it can't build for Windows! But, I have opened some pull requests
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for NixPkgs so that SWORD will be listed as supported. Because, indeed, there isn't anything inherent
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in SWORD that requires it to be built for only Unix systems. It supports all manner of embedded, Windows,
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and other environments in addition to standard Linux/Unix platforms. It only required a few tweaks to
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the build formula to tell it where to find the options that it wanted.
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### TLDR
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Show me the goods!
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OK, if you're just looking for the compiled binaries. Try [this link](../sword-nixbuild-win64-20241018.tar.xz)
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to get the resulting product. Drop me an email if you have any feedback on it. I haven't had much of a
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chance to test things, so it's very possible some parts of it don't work. Give me a shout if that's the case.
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