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I've recently finished version one of a simple arcade game I've been making in SFML. I've already spent months on the physics engine and game, and I'm wondering how much time it will take to port it to Mac. I've been developing it using Visual Studio on Windows10. As far as I can see, this is the only way to do it;

  1. Open Visual Studio on my Mac laptop, download all my windows code

  2. try to compile it, fail, fix all the various stuff that wont work, try to compile again.

I can't seem to find any tutorials indicating a better process, or how long I should expect it to take. It can't be trivial, or else there wouldn't be so many triple-A games that don't run on Mac. I would greatly appreciate any tips on the process or time estimates. Thanks

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  • \$\begingroup\$ Hey I just realized that this might be too general of a programming question to ask on Game dev. If anyone agrees I'll happily delete and repost on generic stack overflow. \$\endgroup\$
    – john_shreds
    Jul 21, 2020 at 16:14
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    \$\begingroup\$ You got the process right; and we can't tell you how much time it will take. If you did a lot of Windows specific stuff, then that's going to take you longer than if you only used SFML's API which should abstract all of it for you. \$\endgroup\$
    – Vaillancourt ♦
    Jul 21, 2020 at 16:43
  • \$\begingroup\$ Thanks @Vaillancourt, I tried to use SFML's API whenever possible, though I expect I'll have some changes to make on the multi-threading. \$\endgroup\$
    – john_shreds
    Jul 21, 2020 at 16:47

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Someone on the SFML forums helped me. It looks like I do just have to download the project on a Mac machine and attempt to compile it until it builds. If I were attempting to release it for Linux, I could have used a crosscompiler in visual studio.

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    \$\begingroup\$ If I were attempting to release it for Linux, I could have used a crosscompiler in visual studio. Yes, maybe. Keep in mind that you still need to test it on the target system before distributing it. \$\endgroup\$
    – Vaillancourt ♦
    Jul 21, 2020 at 16:49
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    \$\begingroup\$ Great point. This past Saturday my night "watching my friends play my game" turned into a night of my friends sending me error codes and waiting. Luckily I have a Mac to test it on and have now learned my lesson about testing on different machines. Thanks :) \$\endgroup\$
    – john_shreds
    Jul 21, 2020 at 16:54
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    \$\begingroup\$ Yes; and once you'll have it working on both system, you'll probably want to develop and test both in parallel to avoid nasty surprises once you're ready to ship :) \$\endgroup\$
    – Vaillancourt ♦
    Jul 21, 2020 at 16:59

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