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Asked: 2026-06-03T11:15:24+00:00

I have a Windows program that has a GUI which also uses a command

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I have a Windows program that has a GUI which also uses a command line interface (a cmd Window) as a debugging console. Basically, when it is double clicked, it launches a command line window and then the program creates all the GUI windows. Then you’d have two Windows: the main GUI and a debugging console.

I’m trying to port this pogram to OS X. Because OS X (and all Unix OSs for that matter) doesn’t automatically launch a command line window when you run a command line application. So, I obviously need another way to port this application.

My initial thought was simply to import the source code into a XCode project, redirect standard input and output and then port the GUI. The GUI and console would run side by side just like in Windows. I don’t think this is the most optimal solution since that would mean I’d essentially have to write a terminal emulator.

My other thought would be to port the application as a command line application which creates its GUI just like in Windows. The application would then have to be run from Terminal.app which could handle all the I/O. Unfortunately, I don’t think you can use the Cocoa framework without using a NSApplication loop.

Any ideas how I could approach this?

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1 Answer

  1. Editorial Team

    You can of course create a run loop from a terminal-launched app. But that generally isn’t what you want to do.

    It sounds like on Windows, the CLI is just being used as a shortcut to creating a real debugging console window. So the simplest answer is to create a debugging console window. It’s pretty easy to create a window which contains just a multi-line text or list view. (If you want something fancier, consider borrowing code from iTerm2 or other open source projects instead of trying to build a complete terminal.) If your debug information is being printed with some fancy macros, just change the macros to log to your list view.

    If you’re directly doing something like fprintf or syslog to do your logging, it might be simpler to create a wrapper app that launches the main app, and the wrapper creates the debugging console window and displays the main app’s stdout and/or stderr. (This might be as simple as using popen.)

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