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Free Optimizing C++ Compiler from Microsoft
FortranDragon writes "Microsoft has made the command line toolkit for Visual C++ available for a free download. You can use the toolkit to build applications and redistribute them if you want (though you should read the EULA for the details, as always). This is a nice boon for those that have to deal with cross-platform compatibility, especially since Microsoft has tried to make Visual C++ more conformant to the ISO C++ standard. Go forth and compile your favorite OSS or FS programs today. ;-)"
I just tried the following program:
.. anyone have any idea why ?
#include
main()
{
printf ("Hello World!\n");
}
And I got the output "Hello Suckers"
Funtage Factor: Purple
MS seems to be doing a lot of this lately. It's nowhere near as open as F/OSS solutions, but it's freeing up access to what's possible with Windows far more than previously.
One of the reasons for the success of OSX is the general geek crowd's appreciation of it's *IX background, but without free dev tools that's nothing but another flavour of unix. Add the ability to dive into developing instantly and there's tens of thousands more developers working for the company.
I develop software for Windows using MinGW and MSys. They provide everything I need for development, apart from the IDE, and this release from Microsoft doesn't include that. The Visual C++ compiler is good, but it isn't extrordinary. Why use it over the open source MinGW tools?
"tried to make Visual C++ more conformant to the ISO C++ standard"
Score one for the team! Microsoft conformed to something!
Karma: -2^0.5 . Mainly due to the imbibing of dihydrogen monoxide
The platform SDK which includes the command line compiler, linker and debugger has allways been a free download (hasn't it). Also, the .net SDK which includes all the languages, libraries, and compilers has also allways been a free download, this is what sharp develop uses.
So you write shit code that doesn't fit the standards ("liberal" code), your shitty compiler doesn't notice and compiles it anyway, and then it's Microsoft's fault when their standards conforming compiler won't compile it?
Clippy: "It looks like you are trying to compile the gimp, did you know the GPL was written by Carl Marx, you don't want to be un-American do you? If you need help embracing capitalism, please ask me."
This looks like an aggressive effort to get people to start developing .NET apps since a major part of the free download includes support for .NET.
One has to assume MS is worried they're losing their development community to run a scheme like this.
From the EULA.... Oh wait, I'd have to waste half an hour downloading the compiler to read it. I'm sure there's an evil clause in there. Best thing I could find relating to VS.net runtimes was this old gem:
Use at your own discretion.
MS provides the Debugging Tools for Windows as a free download. GUI and command line debuggers are included.
I was going to ask about "why get this if there's MinGW" but I see it's already been asked. I suspected someone would say Microsoft's compiler produces better code. Now where's the evidence? I'm looking for something like independent benchmarks or studying of generated code.
...I've been using MS VC and eVC to build code under Winblows and Wince for a long time. I use GNU make under Cygwin with a bunch of fancy default rules.
..the MS compiler is actually not that bad, and you're stuck with at least *SOME* MS tools if you want interoperatibility with other MS tools. MIDL interfaces (formerly ODL), for one.
Having this compiler released means that
a) I don't have to install that confusing GUI
b) I don't have to cough up the money to upgrade (Currently running VC 5.0)
I write library code under UNIX in C, debug it in a sane environment (100% GNU, except for Xemacs) and then port it to Windows (generally pretty trivial -- I port by making Windows look like POSIX, so the UNIX codebase stays basically virgin). Run it through MIDL to get a type library, and all of a sudden your stupid VB developers developing one-off, simple GUIs have access to all kinds of well-debugged code that was originally developed on a sane platform.
As long as your code only touches files or sockets, it will run okay under MS VC.
Do daemons dream of electric sleep()?
This highlights once again how Windows is a more flexible and modern development platform than Un*x. With Windows, email can be run automatically and remotely, without the need for a separate compilation step.
Give Linux away for free - they will come. Same principle applies.
.NET Framework SDK (even back to Version 1.0) it included a fully functional compiler that allowed you to compile C# applications under the CLR. I believe "cl.exe" was also included, the optimizing C/C++ compiler, with the SDK.
If you bothered to download the
Giving the compiler away for free MAKES sense. The only free, mature Windows compiler available is GNU's C/C++ compiler. Although I prefer open-source tools for development, I cannot dismiss Microsoft's compiler as being one of of the best optimizing compilers _there is_. Its only major caveat is the fact that it is designed for one platform only - Windows.
Ayup
The "learning edition" of MSVC++ prohibited you from commercially distributing binaries made with it (or perhaps even just distributing the binaries, I can't remember just now). It also displayed a pop-up window whenever you executed your code, reminding you of this.
However, considering it cost virtually nothing to get the thing, I don't think this was particularly unfair.
How about making Anjuta (or other FOSS C/C++ IDE's, like KDevelop?) run on Windows on top of this compiler and provide Windows programmers with a free competition to VC++?
This way - they get to learn to use an IDE which they can also use on Linux, MS's income might get hurt because people don't HAVE to by VC++ to develop for Windows with MS's optimizing compiler (which is excellent, you can't say it isn't).
Just take this as an advantage for the FOSS community and do something with it, instead of just bitching all day.
Early on, Microsoft understood that the platform battle is won by those that win the hearts and minds of developers. DOS was a *terrible* environment, but developers built some cool applicaitons and the platform became a huge success. You have to look at this announcement in conjunciton with the Unix Services for Windows announcement.
VB and the VB tools captured a good chunk of corporate developers. I hate VB, but you coul design and build simple forms based applications that talk to a database pretty quickly and easily. Visual Studio provide an excellent intregrated IDE (no flames from Borland lovers) for many C++ developers. it simplified a lot of routine stuff, made finding funcitons easy, integrated the debugger and more. Lots of folks.
IBM recognized that it needs developers for Java to succeed and the purchase of Rational was aimed at getting the corporate developer that is on VB and VC++.
With this compiler and the USFW annoucement, you can now take the *nix stuff and port it pretty easily and for free to Windows. No more need to assemble tools, install Cygwin or the like. There used to be a barrier to getting *nix stuff to Windows. it is now gone. Microsoft will now have a platform, that is free, to allow free software developers to make their stuff available on Windows as native applications. And you cna then add Windows extensions if you want.
The unreliguous among us will grab this and move *nix stuff we've been missing or haven't had access to.
Microsoft has spent over a decade essentially supporting only ONE processor architecture, x86. The GNU project has to worry about applying optimization to a plethora of architectures, including the quirks associated with each particular implementation.
Not Microsoft - it gets to focus on how to produce the most amount of work out of a processor of at least 80486 grade instructions. How easy is that? They get to throw a hundred developers to extract every bit of performance possible out of one processor. Every now and then make a modification to support a new supplemental instruction set (MMX, 3dnow!, SSE, etc.)
If you read their optimization whitepapers, you will notice that much of their optimization is done at the math level - nothing Win32 specific. Also, their memory optimization, loop unrolling, inlining, etc. is considered top notch by many software developers.
Ayup
The objective of this is not too hard to discern - keep the geeks and individual developers on the Windows platform. It runs in the same vein as their licensing and releasing Services for UNIX - essentially an admission that CMD.EXE is not everyone's cup of tea as a command interpreter and that, to be frank, for proper scripting, it's actually pretty shit.
:)
I'm not quite sure where they'll go next. They may be following Apple's lead, who have, with Mac OS X, managed to capture an extremely sizeable proportion of the more moneyed developer market by taking advantage of the UNIX foundation and integrating it nicely. It may be that the next thing we'll see is a freebie X11 client.
These kind of things start to make Windows an interesting platform - a closed and, possibly, insecure and buggy base but with some interesting and certainly useful FOSS bolt-ons to make it an extremely compatible platform - imagine having both the traditional Win32 and FOSS software libraries available with little to no portage required! It's a perfect situation for Microsoft - keep the users on Windows (DRMed up and whatever), but appease those who are tempted to switch to Linux by building the best bits right into their current platform.
It's interesting, if nothing else...
iqu
It was never "wrong" per se.
The for scoping you refer to was introduced in the C++ standard, which VC++ supported as far back as version 5 IIRC, however it supported it in a way that was not very useful. You had to turn off all MS extensions to use it, and that also had the side effect of breaking many other things.
As of VC++7 they have a specific switch to enable/disable the for scoping (current version is 7.1, with 8.0 due out next year).
If you need web hosting, you could do worse than here
karma whoring, but anyway, here is the EULA:
END-USER LICENSE AGREEMENT FOR MICROSOFT SOFTWARE
MICROSOFT VISUAL C++ TOOLKIT 2003
IMPORTANT-READ CAREFULLY: This End-User License Agreement ("EULA") is a legal agreement between you (either an individual or a single entity) and Microsoft Corporation ("Microsoft") for the Microsoft software that accompanies this EULA, which includes computer software and may include associated media, printed materials including best practices, white papers, templates, "online" or electronic documentation, and Internet-based services ("Software"). An amendment or addendum to this EULA may accompany the Software. YOU AGREE TO BE BOUND BY THE TERMS OF THIS EULA BY INSTALLING, COPYING, OR OTHERWISE USING THE SOFTWARE. IF YOU DO NOT AGREE, DO NOT INSTALL, COPY, OR USE THE SOFTWARE.
MICROSOFT Software LICENSE
1. GRANTS OF LICENSE. Microsoft grants you the rights described in this EULA provided that you comply with all terms and conditions of this EULA.
1.1 General License Grant. Microsoft grants to you as an individual, a personal, nonexclusive license to make and use copies of the Software (i) for your internal use; (ii) for designing, developing, testing and demonstrating your software product(s); and (iii) for evaluation of the Software.
1.2 Documentation. You may make and use an unlimited number of copies of any documentation, provided that such copies shall be used only for personal internal purposes and are not to be republished or distributed (either in hard copy or electronic form) beyond your premises except as otherwise specifically provided herein.
2. ADDITIONAL LICENSE RIGHTS -- REDISTRIBUTABLES. In addition to the rights granted in Section 1, certain portions of the Software, as described in this Section 2, are provided to you with additional license rights. These additional license rights are conditioned upon your compliance with the distribution requirements and license restrictions described in Section 3.
2.1 Sample Code. Microsoft grants you the right to use and modify the source code version of those portions of the Software identified as "Samples" in REDIST.TXT or elsewhere in the Software ("Sample Code") for the sole purposes of designing, developing, and testing your software product(s), and to reproduce and distribute the Sample Code along with any modifications thereof, in object and/or source code form. For applicable redistribution requirements for Sample Code, see Section 3.1 below.
2.2 Redistributable Code-General. Microsoft grants you a nonexclusive, royalty-free right to reproduce and distribute the object code form of any portion of the Software listed in REDIST.TXT ("Redistributable Code"). For general redistribution requirements for Redistributable Code, see Section 3.1, below.
3. LICENSE RESTRICTIONS -- DISTRIBUTION REQUIREMENTS. If you choose to exercise your rights under Section 2, any redistribution by you is subject to your compliance with the following terms.
3.1 If you are authorized and choose to redistribute Sample Code or Redistributable Code (collectively, the "Redistributables") as described in Section 2, you agree: (i) except as otherwise noted in Section 2.1 (Sample Code) to distribute the Redistributables only in object code form and in conjunction with and as a part of a software application product developed by you that adds significant and primary functionality to the Redistributables ("Licensee Software"); (ii) that the Redistributables only operate in conjunction with Microsoft Windows platforms; (iii) to distribute the Licensee Software containing the Redistributables pursuant to an end user license agreement (which may be "break-the-seal", "click-wrap" or signed), with terms no less protective than those contained in this EULA; (iv) not to use Microsoft's name, logo, or trademarks to market the Licensee Software; (v) to display your own valid copyright notice which shall be sufficient to protect Microsoft's copyright in the Software; (vi) not to remov
Try not to let life get in the way of living.
Example: You create a storage class (my example was a self-redistributing binary tree). The template class Storage<T> has a subclass Storage<T>::Element that holds three Element pointers (parent, left child, right child) and one const <T> pointer.
Of course, the Element class has a constructor, a destructor, a copy constructor, and an assignment operator defined. (Copy constructor and assignment op may not be formally required, but my experience says it's a very good idea to define them in anything that holds pointers).
As in:This code will produce an error. VC++ does not handle functions in named classes inside templates that are not declared inline.
(I may have missed some syntactic detail - It's been a long time since I wrote C++; I write C# these days. But the above annoyed me to no end. It works fine with gcc, which on the other hand can't handle when the functions are implemented inline, which should also work)
Side note: I absolutely love Microsoft's dev tools. This particular example is the exception to me, not the rule.
A fair number of folks get into FOSS because they can't afford the dev tools. Intel releases a free C++ compiler that runs on Windows, but it also runs on Linux so there's a potential switching-over point there. Making their compiler free is a halfhearted attempt to stop this potential customer leak. It's the same reason why the copy protection on their dev tools is historically weak - in the long run they're better off having Visual Studio get pirated by _everyone_ if it keeps them from losing geeks and developers to competitors.
At college, I knew one student in the CS department who owned a legal copy of Visual Studio, and it had been purchased for him by a contract employer. All the other Windows kids pirated it; the only folks who used Dev-C++ and the like were primarily Linux and MacOS people.
I have quite successfully linked C++ libraries compiled with GCC, VC++, and the IntelCC compiler with no problems. It appears to be ok. Perhaps code that relies on internals of STL would fail, but at least pointers to STL objects actually port back and forth.
I agree that VC++ produces faster code than GCC. Don't really know how much, because we don't use GCC on Windows anymore because of this, except to make dependencies for the makefiles. Can't be too much today, as our GCC-compiled Linux versions seem to run at the same speed as the IntelCC compiled Windows version.
The IntelCC compiler produces code almost twice as fast as VC++6. I believe VC++7 is much better, however, but have not tested it.
Fscking CDs are bloody expensive. Look at AOL, the IT magazines, heck, even newspapers that sell for a few cents. All of them are bleeeeding money given those CDs away for free.
MS, with his zillions of money in the bank, can't affor to spend a few thousend making development tools available.
No! Those communist ideas should be brought down and burned like the trojan horse they surely are.
To give something for free! MS! Never!
IANAL but write like a drunk one.
You know that copying it over Kazaa from your mate down the corridor is illegal, right? ;-)
If you disagree, post your argument. (-1, Overrated) isn't your personal censorship tool for views you don't like.
Try using the link /lib switch. It offers the exact same functionality as lib.exe.
> MS seems to be doing a lot of this lately.
Yes. And have you noticed that most of the free giveaways seem to be targetted at developers, rather than users?
I suspect that Microsoft is trying to attract back the many developers who have switched to Linux.
Developers like me.
Unfortunately for Microsoft, it won't work, because it's not about the money.
I didn't switch to Linux in order to get a free-as-in-beer platform.
I switched to Linux to get a free-as-in-freedom platform.
I got tired of Microsoft sabotaging my fvorite applications (e.g. AmiPro).
I got tired of Microsoft changing the rules, in order to force me to buy upgrades, or to make me lock myself in to Microsoft's new schemes (.Net and MS Internet protocols this time).
So I left Windows, and started developing for Linux. I don't even bother to port the finished product to Windows.
There are over 10 million Linux desktop users, and multiple tens of millions of Linux server users. That's a big enough market for me.
1.1 General License Grant. Microsoft grants to you as an individual, a personal, nonexclusive license to make and use copies of the Software (i) for your internal use; (ii) for designing, developing, testing and demonstrating your software product(s); and (iii) for evaluation of the Software.
As in, for demonstration only. If you're going to distribute binaries, don't compile them with this tool.
Nope. That clause governs copying of the Software- in other words, the compiler. It says nothing about distribution of works you create using the Software.
...Ken Thompson's version of the C compiler went! (-:
Got time? Spend some of it coding or testing
Intel's C++ compiler is also free for non-commercial use. It even runs under Linux.
***
3.2 If you use the Redistributables, then in addition to your compliance with the applicable distribution requirements described for the Redistributables, the following also applies. Your license rights to the Redistributables are conditioned upon your not (a) creating derivative works of the Redistributables in any manner that would cause the Redistributables in whole or in part to become subject to any of the terms of an Excluded License; and (b) distributing the Redistributables (or derivative works thereof) in any manner that would cause the Redistributables to become subject to any of the terms of an Excluded License. An "Excluded License" is any license which requires as a condition of use, modification and/or distribution of software subject to the Excluded License, that such software or other software combined and/or distributed with such software (x) be disclosed or distributed in source code form; (y) be licensed for the purpose of making derivative works; or (z) be redistributable at no charge.
****Does "Excluded License" mean GPL? A type of license that requires you to include the source code?
If this is correct, you can't use it to compile most OS programs...
You're also aware that you may not use the complier to produce anything for non-windows platforms... but that yould be difficult anymway.
I don't need a signature.
I remember a certain 12 year old student who couldn't afford MASM and didn't like TASM so he wrote his own macro preprocessor in C. Then the code was fed back to Debug.com and BEHOLD it worked.
Young programmers today don't realize how spoilt they are. Back in the day we all had our copy of the Intel386 assembler document, and a heavily modified version of Abrash's Zen Timer. Have you ever seem a man shuffle assembler instructions by hand to alleviate register contention, or deliberately NOT'ing AX and reversing the following branch to lull the Pentium into correctly predicting the jump, wasting one cycle but saving 4-7 (depending on whether the code following the branch accessed RAM or not, since the prefetch would have been invalidated).
For that matter, do you even remember when we used fancy tricks to either cope with the 64kb code segment limit, or trounce all over it. I hate to say it, but I miss those days, because back then it took more than an optimizing compiler and a few www tutorials for someone to be called a programmer. You actually had to know at least a little bit what was going on under the hood. It wasn't about compilers and libraries and distributed object frameworks, it was about making a limited machine do limitless things.
-Billco, Fnarg.com
Ask and ye shall receive:
Microsoft Debugging Tools for Windows
That toolkit is part of the (also free) Platform SDK, but you can install it separately. It includes NTSD (command-line debugger) and WinDBG (GUI debugger), and KD (the kernel debugger). NTSD and WinDBG sit on top of the same user-mode debugging engine, "dbgeng.dll". They both include really fantastic on-line help which can teach you a lot about debugging in Windows. That said, they are not for the faint-of-heart (the Visual Studio debugger is much more user-friendly). KD.exe uses the kernel-mode debugger built into every NT kernel by default. Of course, you need a second machine to use KD and a serial cable; when broken into the NT kernel debugger, the debuggee is not in control.
(Incidentally, is there a kernel-mode debugger available for Linux? Last time I checked, Linus opposed the concept very strongly, and Linux did not have one available. He called it a "crutch." Sorry, Linus. Kernel-mode device driver writers *like* their debuggers. I have to say that this could be one of several factors impeding device driver development on Linux.)
It looks like some GNU developer has already disassembled it and integrated some of the code into GCC.
I just went to compile vi, and an ASCII paper clip popped up onto my terminal:
"It looks like you're trying to compile EMACS. Would you like me to launch the EMACS wizard now. Because you are stupid, I will launch it anyway"
-- If you try to fail and succeed, which have you done? - Uli's moose
OPTIONS THAT WERE IN VC6 BUT AREN'T IN VC7 cl.exe:NEW VC7 cl.exe OPTIONS:So as you see most of the differences are new switches for the VC.7 version of cl.exe. Those shouldn't cause any trouble, as VC6 just won't use them by default. The two options removed I don't think are very interesting to most poeple. Besides, the VC.7 cl.exe is happy to ignore them:So as another poster has said, it looks like it should just work if you put the new directories first in the MSVC6 bin/lib/include paths.
Cool! All the updates I care about for VC 6 without having to switch to a new IDE!
I wonder if it is possible to use the newer commandline compiler from within Visual Studio 6. From what I hear, the .NET IDE isn't so great for C/C++ work. And come on, a project file is now called a "solution" file?? That's just dumb.
I'm currently writing C++ code using Visual Studio.NET, and I haven't noticed any problems compared to Visual C++ 6. Some of the keyboard shortcut defaults are different, but you can revert to the VC++ 6 layout easily.
I think the main reason it might not seem as good for C++ work is that VS.NET adds considerably more features geared towards .NET development, while C++ appears to be neglected somewhat. Remember that VS.NET's IDE supports all their .NET languages, and C++.
For clarification, a solution can contain multiple projects. The old term they used was workspace. Yeah, I thought it was weird at first, but it's just terminology, plus a workspace sort of implies open windows and developer-specific settings to me. A single solution can be used by multiple developers (CVS works nicely).
i'm personally having a bit of trouble understanding section 3 of the EULA.
section 3.1 requires that software made with this compiler be distributed under (and i quote) "pursuant to an end user license agreement (which may be "break-the-seal", "click-wrap" or signed), with terms no less protective than those contained in this EULA" (emphasis mine)
section 3.2 is less clear. part (b) requires that the "Redistributables" (which, by that, I assume means the standard library and the API libraries) must not be distributed "in any manner that would cause the Redistributables to become subject to any of the terms of an Excluded License." it then defines "Excluded License" with a description that sounds suspiciously like the GPL and related licenses. (i.e., no Open Source licensing.)
section 3.1(ii) is an odd requirement: "(ii) that the Redistributables only operate in conjunction with Microsoft Windows platforms;" it sounds to me that it is explicitly excluding ReactOS and Winelib. (please correct me. i want to be wrong here.)
under those restrictions, doesn't this unduly limit us as programmers? shouldn't we be the ones who decide how our software is distributed? Microsoft is requiring us to guard our code as closely as they guard theirs. isn't this a bit extreme?
again, someone please correct me where i'm wrong. i want to be wrong.
grey wolf
LET FORTRAN DIE!