We're looking at moving from VC++ 6.0 to the newer M$ compiler. VC++ 7.1 sounds to be closer to fully implementing the ISO C++ standard (eg scoping of variables in for statements + partial template specialization), so boost is more fully supported under it, among other things.
Some extra info might be handy here: we're only interested in native C++ code, not .NET, and only interested in using the STL, not ATL or MFC.
So, to get hold of the compiler for VC++ 7.1, we have three options:
* Visual C++ .Net Standard 2003 (does not have an optimising C++ compiler, about AUD$170)
* Visual Studio .Net Professional 2003 (has a lot of crud we don't want, but has an optimising C++ compiler, and is about AUD$1,700)
* VC2003 Toolkit (free in terms of price, but overly restrictive EULA - which even appears to prevent it being used on OSS projects!, an has optimising C++ compiler, but no debug libs and no debugger...)(http://msdn.microsoft.com/visualc/vctoolkit2003/)
Nice how microsoft don't do a Visual C++ .Net Professional 2003, hey? [:(!]
Now it seems to me that it should be quite feasible to get the Standard edition, copy some files from the VC2003 Toolkit, and bump the Standard edition to the Professional edition we're after.
Has anyone tried this? Interested in what people have found.
We'll have to get the "real" professional version of Studio at a later date to be able to release our finished game - either that or we'll grab the intel C++ compiler, I guess. There really are some nasty clauses on the EULA for the free version of VC2003... (At least, I assume professional version of studio has a more relaxed EULA)
Cheers,
Mark/CW
Yeah what I hoping that if I copied the right executables across, that it would be possible to debug (non-optimised) code with the VC2003 tools... I'm assuming that the only differences between the cl.exe will be the fact that the VC2003 version will implement the optimisation behind the /O1 and /O2 flags - just wanting to check before I pay any money to the evil empire though ;->
However, it wouldn't suprise me if microsoft actually did something nasty like stop the cl.exe from the VC2003 tools from generating debug information that was compatible with the Standard edition's IDE :)
You can use the 7.1 compiler with 7.0, I've done it myself and know of other that are doing it now. The main thing is that you have to specify the optimising command line args manually (the IDE doesn't have them). I even have a command script that let me switch between 7.0 and 7.1...
Also, Standard doesn't support source control at all, so you'll have to do that manually too..
You should only need one copy of Professional to compile the final release build.. ;)
You don't get the debugger with the VC2003 toolkit, so you'd have to do normal development with the standard compiler/IDE and do release builds with the toolkit compiler if you can't live without your debugger.