Switching from RealStudio to Juce

Not sure how well known Real Studio is here, but they are currently rebranding to “Xojo” with a new IDE, documentation and services (app hosting etc) and despite this they seem very much like a sinking ship - Still no 64bits with a long road map until it’s actually implemented (along with iOS development that they’ve been beating like a dead horse), with Android support years down the line if at all.

So despite the fact I still have an on going license I feel very inclined to jump ships to Juce; it just amazes me how a single person can have Juce significantly ahead in term of cross-OS compatibility when a team, financed by regular license subscriptions can allow themselves to be so far behind.

Obviously, RealStudio has a lot of conveniences - I believe with Juce (as with other tools) I’m supposed to have a Mac to compile a Mac executable? (I’m on windows) whereas RealStudio was able to build it regardless (but I might been a bit misinformed here, as I know I read that from LiveCode but Juce’s site seems to imply similar).

Currently I’m having a little search over various Compilers and what not, I understand Juce recommends VC for windows users but isn’t that a bit of a waste /bloat if you intend to compile to all OSs? I’m also wondering how flexible Juce is, as coming from RS the language syntax is completely different so I might as well consider my options since D (and I’m sure others) are supposed to be compatible to C++? Or is that a no-go with this library?

Each platform will be compiled locally. I.E. use a VM for each of your targets outside of your main preferred development platform. I.E. I use a Mac as my day to day system, and VMs to build Windows and Linux versions of my application. The Introjucer takes care of creating the make/project files needed to compile for each system. Since you’d be wanting to test the app on the various targets anyway, this doesn’t really create undue extra effort (though Git or SVN will make your life considerably easier)

Aside: I don’t know anything about RealStudio, but if they’re allowing iOS compiles from Windows I think they’re doing all kinds of things they shouldn’t be.