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Some of you might already know that Microsoft is trying to kill desktop development in favor of Metro style apps. The express editions of the new Visual Studio 11 will only support writing Metro style apps. They also won't give you the new compilers as part of the new Windows SDK. The only way to get the compilers is to buy Visual Studio Professional or higher.

Now it's time to find an alternative (alternative compilers for the Windows platform). Any suggestions?

Some links that are related to this issue: http://visualstudio.uservoice.com/forums/121579-visual-studio/suggestions/2645679-visual-studio-11-express-on-windows-7-and-the-abil

http://blogs.msdn.com/b/visualstudio/archive/2012/05/18/a-look-ahead-at-the-visual-studio-11-product-lineup-and-platform-support.aspx

http://www.microsoft.com/visualstudio/11/en-us/products/express

NFRCR
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    "Now it's time to find an alternative (for Windows platform)." If you want an alternative for the Windows platform, try Linux. –  May 22 '12 at 19:47
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    I think the question was confusing. I'm looking for alternative compilers for the Windows platform. I've made it more clear now. – NFRCR May 22 '12 at 19:49
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    If you don't like VC11, why not just stay with VC10? When the "new and improved" version isn't, just ignore it. – Bo Persson May 22 '12 at 20:06
  • @Bo: When will my VC++ 2010 compiler (which is actually VC16.0) start supporting the rest of C++11? – Ben Voigt May 22 '12 at 20:09
  • @Bo Persson: VC10 won't be updated - C++11 support is bad and developing in an environment with hundreds of known unfixed bugs feels bad. With VC you get what is in the RTM and perhaps in a service pack (usually only SP1). From there on you can only hope for a new version to fix the issues. However, the new version is unusable. – NFRCR May 22 '12 at 20:17
  • This sounds more like rant than a real question – Gene Bushuyev May 22 '12 at 20:48
  • @Gene: Really? What's your problem? I'm looking for alternatives which is justified in the current situation. I've also backed up my story with those 3 links. – NFRCR May 22 '12 at 20:52
  • @NFRCR: Probably because you didn't have to justify why you wanted another tool. The question could have been more usefully spent describing your requirements (XP support? C++11 support? UI Designer?) – Ben Voigt May 22 '12 at 21:20
  • @Ben - You will of course not get an new features for VC10, but not much new in VC11 either (except for some nice library hacks). The most obvious news is that there is hardly any core language additions at all. – Bo Persson May 22 '12 at 21:33
  • @BoPersson: The difference is that Microsoft is accepting C++11 compliance bugs wrt VC 2011, and making improvements in future compiler builds. The same can't be said of the "stay on VC 2010" approach. – Ben Voigt May 22 '12 at 22:08
  • If you are used to VC I would stick with it and buy the professional version - it will set you back 500 or 800 bucks - but it will be way cheaper than learning a new environment/compiler. – MiMo May 23 '12 at 13:58
  • GCC + MinGW (compilator) + Eclipse (IDE) + Qt(GUI framework) - this combination seems almost optimal and up-to-date replacement of VC11++ (or whatever will be the name) Express for Windows development. Or just stay with VC++2010 Express. – SChepurin May 23 '12 at 15:55
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    seems Microsoft has [changed mood](http://blogs.msdn.com/b/visualstudio/archive/2012/06/08/visual-studio-express-2012-for-windows-desktop.aspx) with regards to free desktop development. – Agnius Vasiliauskas Aug 01 '12 at 06:25

4 Answers4

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Gcc/G++ of course. In my opinion it is superior to VC++. In addition, you can use Eclipse CDT as IDE, it is quite usable at the moment (compared to older versions). I work like that on Windows. In addition, you can also work on Linux or MacOS without having to switch to another tool.

gexicide
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    True story, opensource pwns proprietary competitors. +1. –  May 22 '12 at 19:51
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    I've checked out MinGW. It currently comes with GCC 4.6.2, despite that the C++11 conformance is quite good. However I haven't found a solution to get std::thread working with MinGW - in fact the header file is quite empty. – NFRCR May 22 '12 at 19:52
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    @NFRCR: FWIW, [MinGW/GCC 4.7.0](http://nuwen.net/mingw.html). Still no `std::thread` though. – Jerry Coffin May 22 '12 at 20:01
  • @Jerry Coffin: Stephan the STL hero. :) I'll check it out. – NFRCR May 22 '12 at 20:14
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    +1 for gcc and -1 for Eclipse. The first is very good compiler, the second is pretty much unusable for large projects - even on latest and fastest system it's slow as molasses and virtual machine swells to enormous size and crashes, and you need to take a day off to let it build index. – Gene Bushuyev May 22 '12 at 20:53
  • What would be ideal is an IntelliJ for C++, Eclipse for Java is absolutely horrible and I would expect the same for use with C++. Comments? – Coder Guy Nov 30 '14 at 01:11
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1) The Metro and WinRT features are accessible from C++/CX which in turn is built on top of COM, so according to this detailed discussion (SO question on WinRT and C) you can use the latest "Microsoft-only" features with any decent C compiler. Of couse this will require some code generation or just a lot of typing to get the access to basic facilities. I believe there would be a transition period and then the open-source community comes up with some automated solution to consume the WinRT APIs.

2) A quick list of available options right now.

Dev tools: MinGW or Cygwin (GCC toolchain + unix-like tools), Clang maybe, OpenWatcom as a thing from the past

GUI Libraries: FLTK, Qt, wxWidgets, Fox GUI toolkit, librocket (if you are into the OpenGL world)

IDEs: Code::Blocks, Eclipse+CDT, QtCreator

3) There's also a non-C++ way:

  1. The FreePascal+Lazarus to allow Delphi-like RAD
  2. Mono/SharpDevelop

Both options can use C++ code with some bindings.

4) Conclusions

These are the alternatives which give similar results but not always the similar level of comfort.

Community
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Viktor Latypov
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Yet another possibility would be Qt Creator, which comes with a full toolset targeting Windows (as well as MacOS, Linux, and Symbian). It is definitely somewhat different from VS, so it takes some getting used to, but overall I'd rate it as pretty decent. Qt (the library) generates somewhat mixed feelings -- some dislike its oddities (E.g., MOC), but quite a few consider it the best designed GUI toolkit available.

Jerry Coffin
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Don't forget the Netbeans GUI which is also available for windoze. It works great, just install mingw and choose this mingw/bin directory for the compiler tools and mysys/bin/make.exe as the make program

to download

https://netbeans.org/downloads/index.html

they have this plugin for vc++

http://plugins.netbeans.org/plugin/42519/vcc4n-visual-c-compiler-for-netbeans

some install info https://netbeans.org/community/magazine/html/03/c++/

Another IDE that I havent used but looks good is

http://www.codeblocks.org/

ejectamenta
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