Visual C++ Toolkit 2003
Yesterday we posted the Visual C++ Toolkit 2003. This toolkit includes the full Visual C++ 2003 optimizing compiler. If you're already using Visual Studio .NET 2003, then you don't need to download this toolkit unless you just want to see what this is all about. The information page for the toolkit includes links to 4 articles that are designed to show different features of the compiler and it also includes a small FAQ that describes the toolkit in more detail. Here's a link:
I see they picked this up already at ActiveWin. I'll add a headline link to the Visual C++ Developer Center on Monday.
Comments
- Anonymous
April 17, 2004
Brian,
this is so cool. i'm sure the guys from sharp develop will be happy to integrate the compiler with their ide... :) [ i'll still be using visual studio though... :) ]
btw: this got picked up alread at nickles.de ( http://www.nickles.de/c/n/3412.htm ) also. - Anonymous
April 18, 2004
The comment has been removed - Anonymous
April 18, 2004
Pretty cool. BTW, I notice that the CL compiler that comes with Visual Studio .NET 2003 has version number 13.10.3077 whereas the one from the VC++ Toolkit is 13.10.3052. Is this the same for you? - Anonymous
April 18, 2004
This is perfect for me!! I use MSVC++ 6.0, and this .NET 2003 edition compiler and linker is perfect for me to import my makfiles with and make a more stable XP builds to release with the originals, and all for free! - Anonymous
April 18, 2004
The comment has been removed - Anonymous
April 19, 2004
This was really great news and I am glad now we have some competition for the Intel C++ compilers and better C++ compilers than the ones that Borland Ship (Mind you I do use the C# Builder)plus these compilers are from Microsoft to boot. I have worked on some of the samples and this is really great stuff. - Anonymous
April 19, 2004
Hmmm... Has anyone else noticed that the toolkit lacks any facility for linking against the DLL C run-time libs? It also lacks libcmtd.lib. Not sure whether that was intentional or an oversight. Otherwise, it works great for all of my projects. - Anonymous
April 19, 2004
Thank you MICROSOFT, I appreciate this very much. Now I am satisfied again with C++ .NET 2003 : Really Cool.
Also some critisism: Updates would be cool too, but you here my complain less further now.
THANK YOU VERY MUCH!
Enjoy your day further,
ryan - Anonymous
April 19, 2004
Splendid! Grabbing it with my 33.6 kpbs link ;) Yarr! - Anonymous
April 19, 2004
Splendid! Grabbing it with my 33.6 kbps link ;) Yarr! - Anonymous
April 19, 2004
When launching the Toolkit from its shortcut in the Start menu a command window appears which has a spelling mistake. Instead of documentation it says documentaion.
Also, the Toolkit is only installed for the current user, as opposed to other tools such as the Platform SDK, which install for all users. So, the Toolkit’s shortcut appears only in the current user’s Start menu and so does the environment variable. It is only set for the current user.
Why do such errors occur? I thought that you check a lot your apps before releasing them. If we could find a spelling mistake in minutes what about other errors, which are hidden? - Anonymous
April 19, 2004
No NMAKE.EXE. No problem, it's in the .NET Platform SDK anyway.
No LIB.EXE. Can't make libraries, and I want to build wxWidgets that happens to be a library! BIG PROBLEM. Is there a freely available package from MS that contains LIB.EXE? - Anonymous
April 20, 2004
The comment has been removed - Anonymous
April 20, 2004
My company uses C++ 6.0 for all development.
Should I install this on my machine? - Anonymous
April 20, 2004
Sounds nice, but what about debugging?
Is there a debugger or is this a pure compile-and-build-suite? - Anonymous
April 20, 2004
For debugging why not download the Windows debugging tools package (WinDbg) from http://www.microsoft.com/whdc/ddk/debugging/default.mspx
It's not the VS.NET debugger (which is really quite cool), but hey - it's free, and it does the job quite nicely. - Anonymous
April 20, 2004
The comment has been removed - Anonymous
April 21, 2004
The comment has been removed - Anonymous
April 21, 2004
This sounds like a scam to make everyone install the .net runtime. I'll stick with VC6 and Intel's compiler thank you very much. - Anonymous
April 22, 2004
No libcmtd.lib
No msvc*.libs
This toolkit is GREAT for those using older ide's (alla VS6) but in order to link against MFC4 or ot generate any Multithreadded DLL code you NEED those msvc*.libs Anyone know here these can be found? - Anonymous
April 22, 2004
Will it work, if I install it over my VC++ 2003.NET standard (the cheap one)?? - Anonymous
April 25, 2004
Try building a CLR application with some STL inside. No luck, libcpmtd.lib is missing. - Anonymous
April 25, 2004
I am a home user of Visual C++ .Net Standard 2003. I write games at home for pleasure and I have written and deployed some applications at work as well.
This toolkit release is good for me because the standard edition does not optimise. I am pleased Microsoft has come back to showing commitment to C++.
I think the CLR has many great features and feel much more comfortable with writing apps for the .Net libraries than with MFC.
I do feel strongly that we need to retain support for creating native executables as well as CLR framework code though.
I think that C++ 2005 is supposed to be able to target native 64-bit code - and as long as that remains the case I am likely to buy VC++ 2005 or VS++ 2005.
I feel they should make the standard edition of VC++ 2005 optimising for us hobbyists on a budget.
I would be really interested in an answer to the question above, can I use the IDE from Visual C++ Standard edition? - Anonymous
April 27, 2004
I installed the toolkit on the same system as VC++ .NET Standard.
Then I used PC Magazine's wmatch program to see what was different. It looks like the compiler is all that changed. Here are the differences:
(1) The compiler files in the toolkit(cl.exe and c*.dll) are newer than the Standard install.
(2) The link.exe that came with the toolkit is an older version than the Standard install.
(3) There are ms71.dll and dbghelp.dll in the bin directory of the toolkit that are in different directories in the Standard install. They're the same versions.
(4) There is an mscoree.lib in the lib directory of the toolkit that is in a different directory in the Standard install. They're the same versions too.
So, it looks like you could just copy the cl.exe and c.dll files over the ones that came with the Standard install and they would work.
Does anyone see a problem with that? - Anonymous
April 27, 2004
VC++ .NET Standard IDE: Optimizing switches disabled... Overwriting cl.exe is not enough. - Anonymous
April 28, 2004
thanks. - Anonymous
May 02, 2004
The comment has been removed - Anonymous
May 03, 2004
The posting "Try building a CLR application with some STL inside. No luck, libcpmtd.lib is missing." interests me. I am trying to compile/link some C++ code with this toolkit, and I get the error "LINK : fatal error LNK1104: cannot open file 'libcpmtd.lib'"
The libcpmtd.lib is indeed missing. What is weird is that the library exists in the lib/IA64 subdirectory. Did they neglect to include the X86 versions, or did they accidentally include too much of the IA64 stuff? - Anonymous
May 04, 2004
Hi Kevin,
Thanks for the feedback. I'll pass this along and let you know if I hear anything back.
Cheers,
Brian - Anonymous
June 02, 2004
The comment has been removed - Anonymous
June 14, 2004
Pheo: Thanks for the tip. Do you know what the c1.dll and c1xx.dll files are for? With my MSVC++ .NET 2003 Standard Edition installation, I tried copying all 5 (the three you mention, and these two) from the Toolkit into the vc7bin directory, and using the tips described on this page ( http://msdn.microsoft.com/visualc/default.aspx?pull=/library/en-us/dv_vstechart/html/vctchoptimizingyourcodewithvisualc.asp ), I received from a 90% to 200% speed up. Very cool... I hope Microsoft will soon offer an upgrade to the Standard Edition to allow selection of such features from the GUI. - Anonymous
June 16, 2004
I want use "Visual C++ Toolkit 2003" without other tools to build DLL and loaddll in my application,who can help me? - Anonymous
June 16, 2004
When i use Visual C++ Toolkit 2003 building a winform application use .net framework ,it ok. But when i run the application ,it always show a console window, how to get rid of it. - Anonymous
June 17, 2004
Jason Doucette:
So essentially you were able to get MSVC++ .NET 2003 Standard Edition working with the toolkit? That's great news. I wanted to hear this from someone before plonking ~$90 for the IDE.
Were there any other problems that you faced??
Moonraker - Anonymous
June 20, 2004
The comment has been removed - Anonymous
June 20, 2004
hi all...
Is there any toolkit like MSVC++ toolkit 2003 that is related to visual basic and that tool is downloadable also..
thanks...
NKS - Anonymous
June 22, 2004
when downloading the core SDK to use with this (to get winsock2.h!), the Microsoft SDK/include/win64/crt directory has comutil.h, while the Microsoft/SDK/include/ directory does not.
shouldn't this be available for non-64 bit programs? or am I doing something stupid? - Anonymous
June 23, 2004
The libcmtd issue can be resolved simply by installing the .NET Framework SDK 1.1 and adding its include and lib directories to your INCLUDE and LIB environment variables -- the .NET Framework SDK 1.1 comes with the Standard compiler set (that can also build native apps using the Platform SDK). - Anonymous
June 28, 2004
Moonraker:
I have had no problems at all since copying the Toolkit c*.* files over the cooresponding files in my VC++ .net Standard 2003 install. In fact, I copied over all 5 c*.* files, including the c1*.*, even though Pheo did not include these. I had a hunch that they were also part of the compiler. Does anyone know any differently? Since this is so important, I published an article on this that you can give out to people, instead of making them search through weblogs for information:
http://www.sawtoothdistortion.com/Articles/FreeOptimizingCompiler.html
Let me know if you have any more information I could add to make this easier. - Anonymous
June 30, 2004
The comment has been removed - Anonymous
July 12, 2004
I'm having the same problems with missing libcpmtd.lib. I downloaded the .Net Framework SDK v 1.1, and the required libs no longer seem to be there. I was really excited about developing with the Microsoft compiler, but without these libraries it is pretty much useless for any real apps. - Anonymous
July 12, 2004
furthermore msvcprt.lib (no debug or release) is completely missing as well. Is this some sort of plan to get a lot of people to waste their time? - Anonymous
July 13, 2004
This works GREAT... the full blown optimizing compiler and cool IDE for approx. $90 ! Can't beat that.
You don't even need to copy the C*.* files over the corresponding files in the VC++ .Net Standard 2003 install folder.
Just go into the options for the VC++ directory settings and add the toolkit BIN folder to the top of the list. I did the same with the include and lib folders but I'm not even sure that's necessary.
So far I haven't had any trouble and I verified that it was using the optimizing compiler when I changed the priorities on the two bin folders.. - Anonymous
August 04, 2004
I am annoyed because I cannot find libcmtd.lib/libcpmtd.lib too (I've downloaded v1.01). Is this deliberate ? - Anonymous
August 04, 2004
Hi Laurent,
Yes. The toolkit was designed to make the optimizing compiler available, and so not everything was included in the kit. I wasn't involved in the choice.
I'll make sure that the appropriate people are aware of your comments.
Thanks!
Brian