Microsoft's C/C++ compiler freely available

[Nathaniel Talbott]

Thought this might be interesting to those stuck on win32...

[url]http://www.winprog.org/tutorial/msvc.html[/url]

Of course, I only care for so much longer, since my Powerbook is on order
;-)


Nathaniel

<:((><

[Phil Tomson]

In article <001301c3ab2f$f5470230$0500a8c0@abraham>,
Nathaniel Talbott <nathaniel@NOSPAMtalbott.ws> wrote:

>Thought this might be interesting to those stuck on win32...
>
> [url]http://www.winprog.org/tutorial/msvc.html[/url]
>
>Of course, I only care for so much longer, since my Powerbook is on order
>;-)

Another one makes the switch ;-) At OSCON this summer it seemed like
something close to half of the people had Powerbooks. It certainly looks
like OSX is making huge gains in the development community.

I'd really like to get one of those Powerbooks too, but can't seem to
figure out how to either come up with the $$ or convince Apple to give me
one ;-) So when I was last at Fry's drooling over one of those
new dual G5 boxes I did a 'ruby -v' at the commandline and found that it
had version 1.6.8, not 1.8.0. As I recall, we were trying to get 1.8.0
out in time to make it into OSX 10.3 - were we just too late?


BTW: I also noticed that Ruby is on the Knoppix 3.3 CD (again it's 1.6.8)
- I was kind of surprised (pleasantly) to find it there.

Phil

[Zach Dennis]

Very cool! Thank you for posting.

Zach

-----Original Message-----
From: Nathaniel Talbott [mailto:nathaniel@NOSPAMtalbott.ws]
Sent: Friday, November 14, 2003 11:22 PM
To: ruby-talk ML
Subject: Microsoft's C/C++ compiler freely available


Thought this might be interesting to those stuck on win32...

[url]http://www.winprog.org/tutorial/msvc.html[/url]

Of course, I only care for so much longer, since my Powerbook is on order
;-)


Nathaniel

<:((><

[Daniel Carrera]

Question:
Why would you want to use Microsoft's C/C++ compiler when gcc is
available? No sarcasm. This is an honest question.

* I saw a benchmark of compilers in which gcc and MS shared the second
place (1st was Intel):

[url]http://www.willus.com/ccomp_benchmark.shtml?p1[/url]

(see the update for Sep 10/02)
This is impressive considering that Intel and MS only cater to one
hardware platform, whereas gcc caters to many.

* Given the above, wouldn't it make sense to use a compiler that isn't
tied to one particular hardware? Especially if you plan on using more
than one hardware.

Cheers,
Daniel.

On Sat, Nov 15, 2003 at 01:22:29PM +0900, Nathaniel Talbott wrote:

> Thought this might be interesting to those stuck on win32...
>
> [url]http://www.winprog.org/tutorial/msvc.html[/url]
>
> Of course, I only care for so much longer, since my Powerbook is on order
> ;-)
>
>
> Nathaniel
>
> <:((><
>

--
Daniel Carrera | Aleph-0 bottles of beer on the wall, Aleph-0 bottles
PhD student. | of beer. Take one down, pass it around, Aleph-0
Math Dept. | bottles of beer on he wall...
UMD, | [url]http://mathworld.wolfram.com/Aleph-0.html[/url]

[Zach Dennis]

GCC on a win32 platform?

Zach

-----Original Message-----
From: Daniel Carrera [mailto:dcarrera@math.umd.edu]
Sent: Saturday, November 15, 2003 3:26 AM
To: ruby-talk ML
Subject: Re: Microsoft's C/C++ compiler freely available


Question:
Why would you want to use Microsoft's C/C++ compiler when gcc is
available? No sarcasm. This is an honest question.

* I saw a benchmark of compilers in which gcc and MS shared the second
place (1st was Intel):

[url]http://www.willus.com/ccomp_benchmark.shtml?p1[/url]

(see the update for Sep 10/02)
This is impressive considering that Intel and MS only cater to one
hardware platform, whereas gcc caters to many.

* Given the above, wouldn't it make sense to use a compiler that isn't
tied to one particular hardware? Especially if you plan on using more
than one hardware.

Cheers,
Daniel.

On Sat, Nov 15, 2003 at 01:22:29PM +0900, Nathaniel Talbott wrote:

> Thought this might be interesting to those stuck on win32...
>
> [url]http://www.winprog.org/tutorial/msvc.html[/url]
>
> Of course, I only care for so much longer, since my Powerbook is on order
> ;-)
>
>
> Nathaniel
>
> <:((><
>

--
Daniel Carrera | Aleph-0 bottles of beer on the wall, Aleph-0 bottles
PhD student. | of beer. Take one down, pass it around, Aleph-0
Math Dept. | bottles of beer on he wall...
UMD, | [url]http://mathworld.wolfram.com/Aleph-0.html[/url]

[Daniel Carrera]

On Sat, Nov 15, 2003 at 05:28:32PM +0900, Zach Dennis wrote:

> GCC on a win32 platform?
>
> Zach

Yes.

[url]http://www.mingw.org/[/url]

MinGW's port of gcc is what the author tested in his benchmarks. It tends
to be a little behind the GNU port of gcc, but not much (I don't think).

Cheers,
Daniel.

>
> -----Original Message-----
> From: Daniel Carrera [mailto:dcarrera@math.umd.edu]
> Sent: Saturday, November 15, 2003 3:26 AM
> To: ruby-talk ML
> Subject: Re: Microsoft's C/C++ compiler freely available
>
>
> Question:
> Why would you want to use Microsoft's C/C++ compiler when gcc is
> available? No sarcasm. This is an honest question.
>
> * I saw a benchmark of compilers in which gcc and MS shared the second
> place (1st was Intel):
>
> [url]http://www.willus.com/ccomp_benchmark.shtml?p1[/url]
>
> (see the update for Sep 10/02)
> This is impressive considering that Intel and MS only cater to one
> hardware platform, whereas gcc caters to many.
>
> * Given the above, wouldn't it make sense to use a compiler that isn't
> tied to one particular hardware? Especially if you plan on using more
> than one hardware.
>
> Cheers,
> Daniel.
>
> On Sat, Nov 15, 2003 at 01:22:29PM +0900, Nathaniel Talbott wrote:

> > Thought this might be interesting to those stuck on win32...
> >
> > [url]http://www.winprog.org/tutorial/msvc.html[/url]
> >
> > Of course, I only care for so much longer, since my Powerbook is on order
> > ;-)
> >
> >
> > Nathaniel
> >
> > <:((><
> >

>
> --
> Daniel Carrera | Aleph-0 bottles of beer on the wall, Aleph-0 bottles
> PhD student. | of beer. Take one down, pass it around, Aleph-0
> Math Dept. | bottles of beer on he wall...
> UMD, | [url]http://mathworld.wolfram.com/Aleph-0.html[/url]
>
>
>

--
Daniel Carrera | Aleph-0 bottles of beer on the wall, Aleph-0 bottles
PhD student. | of beer. Take one down, pass it around, Aleph-0
Math Dept. | bottles of beer on he wall...
UMD, | [url]http://mathworld.wolfram.com/Aleph-0.html[/url]

[Gour]

Daniel Carrera (dcarrera@math.umd.edu) wrote:

> [url]http://www.mingw.org/[/url]
>
> MinGW's port of gcc is what the author tested in his benchmarks. It tends
> to be a little behind the GNU port of gcc, but not much (I don't think).

And with MSYS you get practically the same comfort as on Linux i.e.
configure; make ; make install :-)

Sincerely,
Gour

--
Gour
[email]gour@mail.inet.hr[/email]
Registered Linux User #278493

[Nathaniel Talbott]

Daniel Carrera [mailto:dcarrera@math.umd.edu] wrote:

> Question:
> Why would you want to use Microsoft's C/C++ compiler when gcc is
> available? No sarcasm. This is an honest question.

A few reasons:

- Ease of setup. I've tried to use Mingw before, and found it to be a
nasty mess of dependencies with opaque documentation. Couldn't get it to
work. Perhaps this has changed; perhaps not.
- When in Rome, do as the Romans do. Seriously, if you're coding on
Windows, it makes sense to use Windows-centric tools in a lot of cases. I'm
just glad folks can do that now without forking over any $$$.
- Binary compatibility? I seem to remember someone saying that a Ruby
built with Mingw cannot load extensions that are built with MSVC, and vice
versa. And unlike Linux and its brethren (cousins, ancestors, etc), it is
standard to ship binaries and not source. Thus, it's important to know that
you can ship a binary and it will run without trouble, and the best way to
do that is to compile it with MSVC, since it IS the de facto standard on
Windows, like it or not.
- Ease of use. It seems that every time I see Mingw referred to, it's
someone asking, "How in the world do I get X to build under Mingw?!? I've
tried and it won't work!" Whereas, as a general rule, I don't see the same
issues coming up with MSVC. This is really a subjective measure, but
subjectively speaking, I don't like the results.
- Short learning curve for Windows programmers. Windows is really it's own
environment, and to support it well, we need folks working on it that
specifically know Windows. It's therefore good to make it as easy as
possible for those folks to contribute code to Ruby, and if they're Windows
coders already, they're almost assuredly used to MSVC. Now someone who codes
for Windows at work can come home in the evenings and code for Ruby, without
having to buy himself a copy of MSVC or having to learn a completely new
environment.
- The One-click Windows Installer is built using MSVC. All of the possible
build options were looked at, and MSVC was chosen. Now anyone can help
maintain and contribute to that project without having to buy anything.
That's cool.
- Just because I'm stubborn? Seriously, now that this is free, I'd be very
hard pressed to use anything else. Probably not worth trying to convince me
otherwise. If Mingw is truly better, then eventually I'll see the light and
switch.

I'm certainly not saying "You're an idiot if you use Mingw instead of
MSVC!"; if it works for you, great! But I am saying that one should use the
right tool for the job, and I think it's excellent that this tool (MSVC) has
become freely available. I've heard folks complain many times in the past
that they can't afford or don't want to shell out for MSVC, and that's not a
problem anymore. I consider growth in choices to be a plus.

You asked a non-sarcastic question, and this is my attempt at a
non-sarcastic answer. I hope it helps answer your question, but it is NOT
intended to start a holy war. Again, if you prefer using something like
Mingw on your computer, great. I don't.


Nathaniel

<:((><

[Igor Maximchuk]

> [url]http://www.winprog.org/tutorial/msvc.html[/url]

Can anyone explain license agreement on this comiler?
Can one distribute programs using this free compiler from MS?

Thanks.

[Mauricio Fernández]

On Sat, Nov 15, 2003 at 10:55:26PM +0900, Nathaniel Talbott wrote:

> - Binary compatibility? I seem to remember someone saying that a Ruby
> built with Mingw cannot load extensions that are built with MSVC, and vice
> versa. And unlike Linux and its brethren (cousins, ancestors, etc), it is

I have been compiling extensions with Mingw and using them with Andy's
MSVC Ruby build.

It's quite a PITA however, since you have to either modify rbconfig.rb
to use Mingw or build ruby w/ Mingw, and then run (w/ that binary)
ruby extconf.rb # using the fresh-built Ruby (using Mingw)
make
... now make install won't do what you want so you'd have to install
by hand or
ruby extconf.rb
make install
using the MSVC ruby binary.

MSVC being free (beer) is good news.


--
_ _
| |__ __ _| |_ ___ _ __ ___ __ _ _ __
| '_ \ / _` | __/ __| '_ ` _ \ / _` | '_ \
| |_) | (_| | |_\__ \ | | | | | (_| | | | |
|_.__/ \__,_|\__|___/_| |_| |_|\__,_|_| |_|
Running Debian GNU/Linux Sid (unstable)
batsman dot geo at yahoo dot com

'Mounten' wird für drei Dinge benutzt: 'Aufsitzen' auf Pferde, 'einklinken'
von Festplatten in Dateisysteme, und, nun, 'besteigen' beim Sex.
-- Christa Keil

[Useko Netsumi]

did Microsoft release it?

"Nathaniel Talbott" <nathaniel@NOSPAMtalbott.ws> wrote in message
news:001301c3ab2f$f5470230$0500a8c0@abraham...

> Thought this might be interesting to those stuck on win32...
>
> [url]http://www.winprog.org/tutorial/msvc.html[/url]
>
> Of course, I only care for so much longer, since my Powerbook is on order
> ;-)
>
>
> Nathaniel
>
> <:((><
>
>

[Daniel Carrera]

On Sat, Nov 15, 2003 at 10:55:26PM +0900, Nathaniel Talbott wrote:

> I'm certainly not saying "You're an idiot if you use Mingw instead of
> MSVC!"; if it works for you, great! But I am saying that one should use the
> right tool for the job,

Thank you for the disclaimer.

I don't use MinGW for the simple reason that I don't use Windows. My
comments and my views come from gcc under Linux, Solaris and AIX. Under
these systems, gcc is fantastic. Certainly better than the Sun compiler.
I find it easier to use, and much more dependable.

> You asked a non-sarcastic question, and this is my attempt at a
> non-sarcastic answer. I hope it helps answer your question, but it is NOT
> intended to start a holy war. Again, if you prefer using something like
> Mingw on your computer, great. I don't.

Thank you for the disclaimer. I wondered for a second. It WAS just a
question. I don't use MinGW, like I just said.

Cheers,
--
Daniel Carrera | Aleph-0 bottles of beer on the wall, Aleph-0 bottles
PhD student. | of beer. Take one down, pass it around, Aleph-0
Math Dept. | bottles of beer on he wall...
UMD, | [url]http://mathworld.wolfram.com/Aleph-0.html[/url]

[Chris Thomas]

On Nov 15, 2003, at 9:27 PM, Daniel Carrera wrote:

> I don't use MinGW for the simple reason that I don't use Windows. My
> comments and my views come from gcc under Linux, Solaris and AIX.
> Under
> these systems, gcc is fantastic. Certainly better than the Sun
> compiler.
> I find it easier to use, and much more dependable.

That may not be difficult. Historically, Unix vendor compilers have
tended to suck. IMHO, GCC is adequate. I wouldn't call it "fantastic."
They're working on it, however. Each release is an improvement.

Chris

[Daniel Carrera]

On Mon, Nov 17, 2003 at 07:00:52AM +0900, Chris Thomas wrote:

> >I don't use MinGW for the simple reason that I don't use Windows. My
> >comments and my views come from gcc under Linux, Solaris and AIX.
> >Under
> >these systems, gcc is fantastic. Certainly better than the Sun
> >compiler.
> >I find it easier to use, and much more dependable.

>
> That may not be difficult. Historically, Unix vendor compilers have
> tended to suck. IMHO, GCC is adequate. I wouldn't call it "fantastic."
> They're working on it, however. Each release is an improvement.

Well, I love it. It makes good code, fairly fast, not too large, it
complies things I'd expect it would, and it has a significant collection of
options. It comes with a debugger. I like the --Wall flag. I think that
it's conceptually better than the 'lint' program used by other unices (or is
it just Sun?). I don't like the idea of using different programs for
compiling and syntax checking, since they might have slightly different
ideas of what constitutes good code.

What problems have you had with it?

Cheers,
--
Daniel Carrera | Aleph-0 bottles of beer on the wall, Aleph-0 bottles
PhD student. | of beer. Take one down, pass it around, Aleph-0
Math Dept. | bottles of beer on the wall...
UMD. | [url]http://mathworld.wolfram.com/Aleph-0.html[/url]

[Martin Weber]

Okay, we're getting way OT here..

On Mon, Nov 17, 2003 at 07:37:03AM +0900, Daniel Carrera wrote:

> (...) I like the --Wall flag. I think that
> it's conceptually better than the 'lint' program used by other unices (or is
> it just Sun?). (...)

Nope(*). lint by itself is a very nice tool for checking code for, let's say
valid but dubious C code. Consider the following two examples:

switch (ayaken) {
case BANZAI:
fprintf(stderr, "woohoo! banzai!\n");
default:
abort();
}

and

switch (ayaken) {
case BANZAI:
fprintf(stderr, "woohoo! banzai!\n");
/* FALLTHROUGH */
default:
abort();
}

gcc -Wall won't complain about either of these (except BANZAI/ayaken
might be an enum and we don't cover all of it here), but the second
case is lint-safe. It also documents that it is *no* forgetting of the
break;. lint checks code on another dimension than gcc. It also catches
(some/many/an awful lot of) problems gcc doesn't/can't/won't ever. The
use of lint is totally orthogonal to (g)cc -W<anything>. I think there's
a fair amount of documentation about the use of lint and where it makes
sense and where it doesn't. AFAIK there's even an O'Reilly Book (Code
checking with lint or sth similar).

I wouldn't call gdb (an absolutely orthogonal tool not having anything
to do with gcc except for reading debugging information from the executable
which gcc put there -- any compiler can do that) a useless tool either ...

Nor gprof, dmalloc or other allocation checker (programs or libraries).
Those are just a bunch of development tools, and using them wisely, and
knowing how to use them, WILL improve the quality of (C-) code you are
writing. Agreeing to their standards (most of the time) means agreeing to
what commonly is viewed as 'good' C-Code.

With kind regards,

-Martin

(*): Any unix should have a lint, really. BSD has one, I suppose linux
has one, too (mutter: although my last base installation didn't even have
RCS!!!), and it's fine solaris has one, too.

[Berger, Daniel]

> -----Original Message-----

> From: Daniel Carrera [mailto:dcarrera@math.umd.edu]
> Sent: Saturday, November 15, 2003 1:26 AM
> To: ruby-talk ML
> Subject: Re: Microsoft's C/C++ compiler freely available
>
>
> Question:
> Why would you want to use Microsoft's C/C++ compiler when gcc is
> available? No sarcasm. This is an honest question.

I think the discussion I've read so far of MS VC++ vs gcc misses the
point, so let me give everyone the "corporate" perspective.

First, I've never heard of cygwin/mingw being used in a corporate
setting. It's either *nix or Windows, not *nix on Windows. Even in a
mixed environment, such as the one I'm in, you would never develop a
Windows app under cygwin because you can't require that cygwin be
installed on the client's machine.

Second, I can't count on a shared object built under cygwin to work on
Windows without cygwin installed, even if I avoid fork. It's just not a
risk I'm willing to take.

Just my .02.

Regards,

Dan

[Gour]

Berger, Daniel (djberge@qwest.com) wrote:

> First, I've never heard of cygwin/mingw being used in a corporate
> setting. It's either *nix or Windows, not *nix on Windows. Even in a
> mixed environment, such as the one I'm in, you would never develop a
> Windows app under cygwin because you can't require that cygwin be
> installed on the client's machine.

Small correction. You don't need cygwin to use MinGW. It works nicely with
MSYS and provided shell-lile environment.

> Second, I can't count on a shared object built under cygwin to work on
> Windows without cygwin installed, even if I avoid fork. It's just not a
> risk I'm willing to take.

MinGW produced libraries works with MSVCRT.

Sincerely,
Gour

--
Gour
[email]gour@mail.inet.hr[/email]
Registered Linux User #278493

[Ollivier Robert]

In article <bp4gi8064o@enews4.newsguy.com>,
Phil Tomson <ptkwt@aracnet.com> wrote:

> had version 1.6.8, not 1.8.0. As I recall, we were trying to get 1.8.0
> out in time to make it into OSX 10.3 - were we just too late?

At least it is complete with headers and libruby.dylib, something that was
missing in 10.2. Anyway, Ruby 1.8.1 and the CVS version compile w/o
problems. Be sure to have libreadline installed before recompiling or you
won't get readline support in irb.
--
Ollivier ROBERT -=- Eurocontrol EEC/ITM -=- [email]roberto@eurocontrol.fr[/email]
Usenet Canal Historique FreeBSD: The Power to Serve!

[Ollivier Robert]

In article <20031116052729.GB1511@math.umd.edu>,
Daniel Carrera <dcarrera@math.umd.edu> wrote:

> comments and my views come from gcc under Linux, Solaris and AIX. Under
> these systems, gcc is fantastic. Certainly better than the Sun compiler.
> I find it easier to use, and much more dependable.

That's true except for code quality. The proprietary compilers on Sun,
DEC^WCompaq^WHP and Intel (icc) are generally way better in code generation
than gcc. The main thing about gcc is that it is there and free.

--
Ollivier ROBERT -=- Eurocontrol EEC/ITM -=- [email]roberto@eurocontrol.fr[/email]
Usenet Canal Historique FreeBSD: The Power to Serve!

[Benjamin Peterson]

Daniel Carrera <dcarrera@math.umd.edu> wrote in message news:<20031115082603.GB780@math.umd.edu>...

> Question:
> Why would you want to use Microsoft's C/C++ compiler when gcc is
> available? No sarcasm. This is an honest question.

A better question these days might be: why would you want to use
Microsoft's C/C++ compiler when their C# compiler (and the .NET build
tools and runtimes) are also free?