Considering to develop a desktop application with Qt for Windows. It will be a free download application, but for a commecial SERVICE. (need an account with our commercial service to work).
I think we could use the Qt for Windows from Nokia (LGLP version) because its free app. But the lastest one version of Qt needs a C++ complier from Microsoft.
Which one?
Do I need to pay for an C++ compiler from Microsoft, or do they have a free version to use with Qt?
Reading info docs, googling and we still cann't understand what tools do I need.
If you want to use the Visual Studio compilers, you can download the free Windows SDK. The following link takes you to the SDK for Visual Studio 2008:
Microsoft Windows SDK for Windows 7 and .NET Framework 3.5 SP1
This includes all the C++ compilers and tools you need. (There is a more recent version available, but Visual Studio 2010 is not yet a "level 1 supported" platform for Qt.) We are using this on standalone build machines and it works fine.
Just a personal opinion, but we have found that using anything other than MSVC on Windows (for example, MinGW) causes a lot of problems. It is not that the other toolchains are bad, it is just that they are all treated as second-class citizens. We had lots of problems with third-party libraries not being able to build in MinGW or having nonexistent build instructions and having to do a lot of manual Makefile editing, etc. You are much more likely to have things "just work" if using MSVC.
For the most part (static linking), you cannot mix and match. You need to pick one toolchain and stick with it. If I were starting from scratch, I'd definitely go with MSVC.
Just our experience (we started with MinGW); your mileage may vary.
No, you do not need to pay for anything.
The Microsoft toolchain is available for free as part of the Microsoft Windows Software Development Kit.
Additionally, the following article may also be of interest to you:
Developing Windows Applications in C++: The tools you need
The alternative supported by Qt is MinGW. The runtime libraries are free from copyright, so you can do whatever you want with them.
It is basically the Windows counterpart of the GNU Compiler Collection (GCC) under Unix.
Related
We are currently using CUDA on windows which requires MS C++ Build tools installed. With every new version of the CUDA toolkit it happens that newer versions of Visual Studio are not supported. That's why we are using the MS build tools seperately so that the VS version doesn't matter.
Since its hard to guide our developers to install the right CUDA and MSVC version we have packaged it into NUGET packages so that the toolkit (especially NVCC) is in a defined version and location. Additionally we wanted to do this with MSVC but we couldn't find a good solution since the installer obviously does modifications on several places that we don't know.
Is there any good way to get the MSVC tools portable so that we can simply drop it into a folder and put the right pathes?
NVCC doesn't support GCC, otherwise I would have gone with this.
I have an installation of visual studio 2015 (french version). The installation itself take a lot of disk space. I have only C++ compiler installed without .net, C#, web and mobile developer toolkit.
Does anybody know what is the actual reason for too much disk space requirement compared to other C/C++ compiler toolkits (GCC, Clang).
another point:
Installing a language pack for english demands 4GB of disk space. Why it requires that much space where I am installing only a different language. I mean compiler executable remains same in this case. Just the internationalization parameters needs to be changed.
Is there any technical or commercial reasons to why Visual Studio do this.?
The installation itself take a lot of disk space. ... Does anybody know what is the actual reason for too much disk space requirement compared to other C/C++ compiler toolkits (GCC, Clang).
Because Visual Studio installs a heck of a lot more stuff than just a compiler toolkit like GCC or Clang. For example, it includes an IDE, an interactive debugger, a bunch of libraries, the source code for all of the included libraries, profiling and other tools, etc.
If you just want the compiler toolchain and not the IDE or anything else, download the standalone C++ build tools.
Or, for an earlier version of the build tools, just download the Windows SDK. (The build tools are no longer included starting with the Windows 8.1 SDK. Therefore, you'll need to get an older version, like the Windows 7 SDK.)
I'm kind of lost with all these SDK windows versions.
For instance, I installed vs2013 on windows8.1, and I (also) need to link my apps against vs2008 runtime (platform toolset).
Should I install the whole VS2008 too or just the API. In the last case, what SDK do I have to install ?
You are talking about two very distinct things. The Windows SDK only covers the declarations and libraries that you need to make winapi calls. SDK v8.1 is suitable to target any modern Windows version since Vista, you select the Windows version you want to target by setting the _WIN32_WINNT macro. Note that XP requires an older SDK version, v7.1 is the last one that's still suitable and selected by setting the Platform Toolset to v120_xp.
The runtime libraries are a pure implementation detail of Visual Studio C/C++ projects and completely unrelated to the SDK. When you build such a program on VS2013 with the /MD compile option then it will have a dependency on msvcr120.dll, possibly msvcp120.dll and others. These DLLs implement the C runtime library and the C++ standard classes. And possibly MFC, ATL, OpenMP and AMP if you use those libraries.
If you still have a dependency on the VS2008 version of those libraries then you are liable to have a Really Big problem. You can obtain the release versions of those DLLs from the redist installer you can download from Microsoft. Having a dependency on the debug version requires having VS2008 installed on your machine. But having trouble linking the program and misery at runtime is highly indicated, the runtime libraries changed a great deal between VS2008 and VS2013 thanks to the new C++11 language standard. Having more than one CRT in a program is in general liable to cause lots of trouble.
You need to strongly pursue getting the library that still has the VS2008 dependency rebuilt. Contact the owner of the library if necessary to get an update.
I would like to use C/C++ for coding my apps, but I need my apps running on all versions of Windows from XP to Win8, independently by any platforms, run time libraries and so on.
Briefly: What kind/type of C/C++ I suppose to use, be able to run my apps on every type of Windows without any additional installation, just default one. e.g Windows XP SP1
C++ can run on just about any OS, as long as you avoid (or, via conditional compilation, provide alternatives for) anything specific to one OS or version. Win32 code is almost all the same between versions; the main difference is added functionality in newer versions. Between Windows and, say Linux, though? Not so much. You kinda need to pick a platform, unless you want to either stick to text mode (which is pretty close between OSes, thanks to standards) or learn some whole other platform-neutral API like OpenGL, wxWidgets, GTK, etc.
As for which compiler to use, if you're sticking with Windows, I'd recommend Visual Studio. Microsoft has a free (Express) edition that will let you compile Win32 code or .net. (You'll need the paid version, or some playing around with the Platform SDK, to play with 64-bit though.) And the IDE isn't too bad either. If you just want a compiler, the Platform SDK has the same compilers VS has, and includes 64-bit support (and even a bunch of code samples and tools) as well.
As for being independent of any runtime libs: Every C++ compiler that's worth using has a runtime library. If you link statically against it, though, the parts you need will be embedded in your EXE. Alternatively, you have permission to distribute the runtime libs with your app (though you may need to install it via a package they provide, that you bundle together with your app...i forget how all that works).
All popular C++ compilers support XP up. You can statically link the runtime, or, for mingw, you can link against the runtime supplied with Windows.
I'm just starting to learn Ada and was wondering if an editor like MVS 2008/2010 can be used? Will MVS detect the GNAT compiler? I have the GNAT GPL compiler but find the GPS editor hard to use (much less intuitive than the MVS editor). The tutorial doesn't explain well how to create a project in GPS.
I'm currently using AdaGIDE which works well, though it's limited in features.
Thanks.
I haven't ever seen any VS addon for Gnat. It would be tough to do for vanilla Gnat, as it isn't compatible with the Microsoft linker. This is more of a gcc vs. Microsoft thing. There is a Gnat .NET port, which claims to integrate well with the Microsoft tools (including VisualStudio). You may have better luck with that.
The other option you have is ObjectAda. It doesn't use VisualStudio either, but it uses an environment designed to be familiar to VS users. It isn't free, but last I checked its cost was comparable to VisualC++'s. It does use the Microsoft linker, so integrating it with VisualStudio should be doable.
Personally I loathe VisualStudio, and do all my editing in Emacs (Even for Microsoft C++ work), but I can see where you are coming from.
VisualAda isn't released yet, but when it is eventually, it will not only integrate GNAT with Visual Studio, but also automatically generate Ada bindings for WinRT components รก la what C++/WinRT does for C++. Here is a video and here is a posting on comp.lang.ada of a demo of the unreleased VisualAda.
Finally, we got "Visual Ada" plugin by Alex Gamper:
https://marketplace.visualstudio.com/items?itemName=AlexGamper.VisualAda
As stated by many others, the add-on is based on gcc/gnat (with all that mingw/msys2 infrastructure) and still not native for VS