= Building BOINC applications = When building a BOINC application, you typically * want versions for several platforms (Windows, Mac OS X, Linux); * want each version to run on a wide range of volunteered computers (e.g. the Linux/x86 version should run on Linux systems of many ages and types). Achieving these goals can be challenging. However, BOINC provides tools and example files that simplify the task. Note: if you develop [VboxApps apps that run in VirtualBox virtual machines] these challenges disappear. Whether you're creating a new application or adapting an existing application to BOINC, we recommend that you start by building the BOINC sample application '''example_app''' on all the platforms you want to support. When this is done, you can use the example application and its associated project files as a basis for your own application. The first step in building the example application on a given host is to [SourceCodeGit download the BOINC source code] on that host. The next steps depend on the target platform. See more explanations for each of them: * [CompileAppWin Windows] * [BuildMacApp Mac OS X] * [CompileAppLinux Linux] * [AndroidBuildApp Android] * [wiki:GPUApp CUDA and OpenCL]