Microsoft's C/C++ compiler freely available

ruby-talk
1

Thought this might be interesting to those stuck on win32…

http://www.winprog.org/tutorial/msvc.html

Of course, I only care for so much longer, since my Powerbook is on order
:wink:

Nathaniel

<:((><

2

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…

http://www.winprog.org/tutorial/msvc.html

Of course, I only care for so much longer, since my Powerbook is on order
:wink:

Nathaniel

<:((><

3

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):

http://www.willus.com/ccomp_benchmark.shtml?p1

(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…

Win32 Tutorial - Free Visual C++ 2008

Of course, I only care for so much longer, since my Powerbook is on order
:wink:

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, | Aleph-0 -- from Wolfram MathWorld

4

Win32 Tutorial - Free Visual C++ 2008

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

Thanks.

5

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…

Win32 Tutorial - Free Visual C++ 2008

Of course, I only care for so much longer, since my Powerbook is on order
:wink:

Nathaniel

<:((><

6

In article 001301c3ab2f$f5470230$0500a8c0@abraham,

Thought this might be interesting to those stuck on win32…

Win32 Tutorial - Free Visual C++ 2008

Of course, I only care for so much longer, since my Powerbook is on order
:wink:

Another one makes the switch :wink: 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 :wink: 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

···

Nathaniel Talbott nathaniel@NOSPAMtalbott.ws wrote:

7

Win32 Tutorial - Free Visual C++ 2008
Of course, I only care for so much longer, since my Powerbook is on order
:wink:

What? I need about 600 Megs to install that damned compiler? Any liter
solutions?

Gergo

···

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8

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):

http://www.willus.com/ccomp_benchmark.shtml?p1

(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…

Win32 Tutorial - Free Visual C++ 2008

Of course, I only care for so much longer, since my Powerbook is on order
:wink:

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, | Aleph-0 -- from Wolfram MathWorld

9

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

<:((><

···

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.

10

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 -=- roberto@eurocontrol.fr
Usenet Canal Historique FreeBSD: The Power to Serve!

11

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?

12

GCC on a win32 platform?

Zach

Yes.

http://www.mingw.org/

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.

···

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

-----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):

http://www.willus.com/ccomp_benchmark.shtml?p1

(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…

Win32 Tutorial - Free Visual C++ 2008

Of course, I only care for so much longer, since my Powerbook is on order
:wink:

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, | Aleph-0 -- from Wolfram MathWorld

–
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, | Aleph-0 -- from Wolfram MathWorld

13

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.

···

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

–
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– Christa Keil

14

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,

···

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

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, | Aleph-0 -- from Wolfram MathWorld

15

In article bp4gi8064o@enews4.newsguy.com,

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?

I tried working with Apple to do this (with special thanks to James
Duncan
Davidson) but it was just too late. They had already committed to
golden
master before 1.8 was finalized :frowning:

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.

Yeah, I have a blog post on how to do it here:

http://richkilmer.blogs.com/ether/2003/10/building_ruby_1.html

-rich

···

On Nov 22, 2003, at 9:17 AM, Ollivier Robert wrote:

Phil Tomson ptkwt@aracnet.com wrote:

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

16

bjsp123@imap.cc (Benjamin Peterson) writes:

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?

Because C/C++ are both platform-independent?
Because C# is yet another obsolete offspring of C/C++?
Because I don’t want garbage collection in my compiled language of choice?
Because I want templates?
Because…

oh well, enough rant for now :slight_smile:
regards
frank

···

–
Frank Schmitt
4SC AG phone: +49 89 700763-0
e-mail: frankNO DOT SPAMschmitt AT 4sc DOT com

17

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

Sincerely,
Gour

···

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

http://www.mingw.org/

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).

–
Gour
gour@mail.inet.hr
Registered Linux User #278493

18

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

···

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.

19

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 -=- roberto@eurocontrol.fr
Usenet Canal Historique FreeBSD: The Power to Serve!

20

Hi!

  • Frank Schmitt; 2003-11-24, 13:08 UTC:

bjsp123@imap.cc (Benjamin Peterson) writes:

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?

Because C/C++ are both platform-independent?

C# is platform-independent, too. Microsoft’s C# compiler is not the
only one…

Because C# is yet another obsolete offspring of C/C++?

I wouldn’t call it obsolete unless there is a good Ruby compiler…

Because I don’t want garbage collection in my compiled language of
choice?

Most programs dynamically allocate and free memory so garbage
collection is a must. What you are talking about is automatic
garbage collection. In C# you can manually collect garbage or you can
have C# do that for you - it is possible to have both in one program.

Because I want templates?

Yes, that’s a problem but MS is working on that. The major problem
with upcoming templates is that ‘slipping deadline’ brand campaign.

Josef ‘Jupp’ Schugt

···

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