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Microsoft Continues Porting Visual C++ To Linux (microsoft.com)
Long-time Slashdot reader Billly Gates shared some news from Microsoft's Visual C++ blog: Visual Studio 2017 now lets developers write C++ code for Linux desktops, servers, and other devices without an extension, targeting specific architectures, including ARM:
Visual Studio will automatically copy and remotely build your sources and can launch your application with the debugger... Today Visual Studio only supports building remotely on the Linux target machine. It is not limited to specific Linux distros, but we do have dependencies on the presence of some tools. Specifically, we need openssh-server, g++, gdb and gdbserver.
You do realise that "remote" in this instance is you own Linux machine, right? Not a closed build server owned by Microsoft - you are asked for connection information to a Linux machine so VS can copy sources, build, run and connect the debugger.
A 30 second scan of the link in the summary would have shown that up, but that might have held up your shit posting...
If I were going to switch to anything other than gcc (or support anything in addition to it), I would first go for clang and then maybe icc. I can't imagine what value vc++ would add over those.
gcc's warning/error messages are pretty awful and I really like that clangs almost always point me precisely to where the problem is, as opposed to where the problem finally made the compiler lose its mind. Does vcc++ improve on clang in that respect? If it does, I could supporting it as a build target for automated builds to get the nice diagnostics (I do this now for a project with clang), but I can't imagine it would be worthwhile for something that gets deployed.
icc is nice if you are on Intel hardware and want the sooper-dooper extra special optimizations, but that is about it.
I suppose when you're aiming for first post you don't have too much time to think of anything more constructive.
What, framing the discussion properly is not constructive? See, if Microsoft had ever genuinely reformed, then it would indeed be unconstructive to respond to Microsoft's potentially worthy initiative in such a perjorative way. But Microsoft never did reform. It is unnecessary to look any further than Microsoft's shenanigans with Windows 10 to be sure of that, just the tip of the iceberg. So, actually, "fuck Microsoft" is a lot more constructive than you seem to believe: it helps keeps us alert to evil intent, should there be any, irrespective of the possibility that there might really be none in this case. Not that I have the slightest interest in adopting Microsoft's development platform. I am perfectly happy and productive with the one I have now, the development of which is controlled by people I trust.
When all you have is a hammer, every problem starts to look like a thumb.
You do realize that most of the complaints you have are basically moving a Linux desktop more toward what MS has done with Windows desktop. PulseAudio bears no small resemblence to Windows Vista+ audio stack (in terms of architecture). systemd similarly resembles the way microsoft services work, journald resembles event viewer design, networkmanager is pretty much the same way Windows does network management, dconf acts a lot like the registry.
If anything, I'd say MS is worse at many of these. As much as I object to journald, event viewer is worse. systemd does make some things more complex, but not nearly so much as the way microsoft handles services. dconf is at least more straightforward and more powerful than windows registry.
XML is like violence. If it doesn't solve the problem, use more.
So basically they're just porting the IDE.
No. The IDE still runs under Windows. This extension uses SSH to run the compiler on a remote Linux system.
Remind me again why I'd spend money on this instead of just freely using eclipse or netbeans or something?
You don't have to spend money on Visual Studio. This extension works with the free Community edition as well as the paid version. But if you don't currently use Visual Studio then you don't need change just for this feature. It is only really useful if you also want to use the software to develop Windows and mobile applications.
Personally I think "Fuck microsoft" perfectly sums it up. They spent decades attacking FOSS and hindering progress to line their own pockets. So yeah, fuck them.