Bad news for FOSS C++11 on Windows
The Big Brother has spoken; thou shalt write Metro apps.
According to ars technica:
If you want to develop desktop applications—anything that runs at the command line or on the conventional Windows desktop that remains a fully supported, integral, essential part of Windows 8—you’ll have two options: stick with the current Visual C++ 2010 Express and Visual C# 2010 Express products, or pay about $400-500 for Visual Studio 11 Professional. A second version, Visual Studio 11 Express for Web, will be able to produce HTML and JavaScript websites, and nothing more.
This is not good for open source. I doubt Microsoft will ever put forth effort for full C++11 support in VS 2010. So, this essentially means that, if you want to compile not only traditional Win32 applications but also standard C++11 code on Windows, you’ll have to pay for the professional version of Visual Studio.
Sigh.
Photo illustration by Aurich Lawson
Update (June 9, 2012):
Apparently, Microsoft has changed it’s mind. Good.
This is indeed bad news. I have been advocating the Express editions as a start point for students. It is simple to use, help to learn C++ and give the skills needed in the professional IDE.
It seems that Microsoft now is not a developers, developers, developers company anymore.
Comment by Josue A. Gomes on June 3, 2012, 23:14
“Starter-developers” will choose available alternatives such as mingw or *nix and this will help grow open-source community base a lot!
After all, it’s Micro$oft.
Comment by Sanjar on June 5, 2012, 19:41
I’ve had to go through a moderate amount of hoops to build OSS on Windows, mainly because I use mingw, not VC++.
E.g., when I read stuff like this (my emphasis)
“Microsoft Visual Studio 7.1 (2003), 8.0 (2005), 9.0 (2008) or 10.0 (2010) is *required* to
build the POCO C++ Libraries on Windows platforms.”
I know I’m in for some “Interesting Times”(TM).
So, I’m hoping this change will mean better support for those of us who are on Windows but don’t use VC++.
Disclaimer: I’ve just found POCO and i’m still trying to figure out how to build it, so my snide remark above may be mistargeted
Comment by Paulo Caetano on June 6, 2012, 14:31
For a free alternative try Qt Creator 2.5 from qt.nokia.com
you can get get mingw gcc 4.7 from nuwen.net with boost 1.49 already prebuilt in the distribution and c++11 mode automatically enabled.
For gdb you can get from http://code.google.com/p/qp-gcc/
You will have a IDE that is fast, free, has most of C++11, and has a good debugger with STL visualizers
Comment by anon on June 7, 2012, 05:34
Hi alex,
from Visual Studio blog ( http://blogs.msdn.com/b/visualstudio/archive/2012/06/08/visual-studio-express-2012-for-windows-desktop.aspx ), they have announced that Visual Studio 2012 express edition will support desktop development with C++, C# and VB after heard from community.
Glad that they have changed their original decision.
Comment by panovr on June 9, 2012, 15:09
Good to know they came to their senses. Thanks for the notification.
Comment by alex on June 9, 2012, 17:19