Cross compiling from macOS to Windows

[carl_caulkett]

* Mac Mini M1
* macOS 14.6.1
* Lazarus 3.99
* FPC 3.3.1

I've just been looking at https://wiki.lazarus.freepascal.org/Cross_compiling#From_macOS_to_Win64, and this raises a question: When it says "Lazarus will also recompile its component source code; so don't be alarmed, it will just take a little longer", will it leave my system still able to build macOS apps as normal? In other words, will the changes being made for cross-compilation be in addition to Lazarus's capabilities, rather than changing what is already there?

[Thaddy]

It will add, not change. The cross compiled libs get their own versioned directory e.g. /usr/lib/fpc/3.3.1/units/x86_64-win64/ , /usr/bin/fpc/3.3.1/x86_64-win64/ etc.(there may be minor differences, depending on platform)
You can write some simple shell scripts to switch between versions.
Note that the bin directory may be simply /usr/bin but that can be configured to the above. for cross compiling with a single version that does not matter too much since the core compiler is always called ppcross<platform>, unless you rename it yourself.