Use third party framework in Command Line Tool

That last one is an excellent punch line!

>I found a 3rd party framework called LibXL which provides C++ with the ability to create and edit Excel files.

That should be coming with a manual. Some frameworks can be included in their entirety into the program you are writing, where for others you can only reference to it and you have to distribute the framework file(s) along with your own application. This doesn't sound like one, but an external framework may only be meant for GUI functions, in which case you cannot write a Terminal-only program.

But here comes the kicker:

>P.S: I'm using XCode 4.2 to write this application, and I'm using Command Line Tool because the application has to be useable on Windows.

It's possible for you to *write* the program but not to compile it. (Actually, you *can* compile it but then you have a Mac Terminal program, not a Windows one.) Even if you know what you are doing and are happy with sending over the source code, together with instructions on how to compile it under Windows, this implies you would only and *exclusively* use functions that are available in compilers for Windows. That rules out your External framework idea -- unless there is a Windows version available as well (do check for that; if this is an Open Source project, there very well may be.) But you are still programming "blind", and if you get it to work on your Mac (and nevermind the problem with the framework being external, because you won't need to send it over anyway) but your friend canNOT make it work under Windows, you won't know if it's because the Windows version of the compiler doesn't accept the external library, or it's the wrong version, or you accidentally used a Mac-only feature anyway, or the friend does not know how to compile ... et cetera, et cetera.

Best advise is to install VirtualBox (or something similar) on your system, test all you want with XCode but then, after you got it to work, carry over the project into Windows and start a-new.

What problems are you having? What you have described should work fine. The biggest issue is that the dynamic library must be installed in a dynamic library search path before the program can run. You may be able to build it, but not run it.

So, start with exactly what is going wrong and we can go from there.

A framework is just a convenience to encapsute headers and libraries into the same folder. It doesn't change any underlying behaviours. If you install the libxl framework in a standard location, then build with that, it should work fine.

Of course, I'm basically just guessing since you haven't yet said what the actual problem is. Until that happens, the best anyone can do is provide suggestions about how things are supposed to work.

Try #include "LibXL/libxl.h". That wouldn't be cross-platform though. In Xcode's compiler settings, you can specify the "-I" include setting and the "-L" linker setting. You will still need to make sure libxl.dylib is somewhere in a search path.

Before you mentioned doing:

g++ <your_cpp_file> -I<path_to_headers> -L<path_to_library> -lxl

What happens when you do that? Xcode is optimized for larger iOS and Mac projects.

I took a look at that library. It is very poorly done. The C++ examples will not compile. The provided framework file is not valid. It seems to work, but I sure wouldn't deliver any code with that. My official suggestion is to find another library.

If you really want to use it, you will have to hack it up to make it work. You need to copy all the files from "include_cpp" into the "Headers" folder in the "libXL.framework" folder. Then, that framework folder needs to be copied somewhere on the system where it can be found, such as /Library/Frameworks or ~/Library/Frameworks.

I suggest just write Excel XML documents instead. I think the original XLS format is pretty simple too.