It doesn't look like the charts have been updated for VS2008, but for VS2005, you'd be missing MFC/ATL, the Win32 resource editor, Add-In support, the 64-bit compiler, and source code control integration. I say almost, because they do lack some useful features.
While Microsoft says that the Express editions are targeted toward the hobbyist, they're almost full featured enough to ship professional applications - they have the full optimizing compiler, and you can add in the Platform SDK to build native applications. There are still people using VC6SP5 + Processor Pack, but if you're not an experienced programmer with an existing VC6-based code base I couldn't recommend it. Finally, you should watch out for VC6 Standard Edition because that version doesn't have an optimizing compiler - you'll always get unoptimized code unless you have at least Professional. Another issue you'll run into is that at this point most Microsoft SDKs no longer support or work with VC6 - even if you do get them to link, the debugger won't understand the new debug information. With regard to standards compliance, the last time I tried backporting code to VC6, the pain points were templates and for loop scoping.
VC6 is by far my favorite IDE, but it is getting pretty old. If you browse around the web you will find many references in regards to Visual Studio 6.0 and C++ compliance (which more or less was around 70%).
I am still using it for maintaining projects that I have delivered to customers using that compiler however, for new projects it is pretty much out of question since I simply do no get my source code compiled any longer. Visual C++ 6.0 is pretty outdated and based on its release date (which was before the official C++ standard) it lacks quite some C++ compliance. Visual Studio 2005 including service pack 1 is pretty "workable" at this point. Visual Studio 2008 just came out and there probably will be a lot of defects reported in the near future that may or may not affect the work you are doing. My suggestion would be using Visual Studio 2005 at this point. However, let me try to answer in a more objective way. This is a subjective question and you will certainly get many biased answers. what version should I get if I just want to compile C++ The major point of my posts is to aid in the learning process.1. I may also give inefficient code or introduce some problems to discourage copy/paste coding. They are meant to just illustrate a point. Any samples given are not meant to have error checking or show best practices. I'm not sure if Visual Studio 2019 will change the default. What's more, the latest versions of the C++ compiler have defaulted to C++14 with C++17 being available with a compiler option. Microsoft (R) C/C++ Optimizing Compiler Version 7.1 for 圆4īecause Visual C++ inherited the version numbers from Microsoft C++, the compiler version number is offset from the toolset version by 5.
Visual Studio 2019 preview 1.1 identifies itself as:Ĭ:\Program Files (x86)\Microsoft Visual Studio\2019\Preview>cl Microsoft (R) C/C++ Optimizing Compiler Version 6.1 for 圆4
Visual Studio 2017 update 9 identifies itself as:Ĭ:\Program Files (x86)\Microsoft Visual Studio\2017\Community>cl Microsoft (R) C/C++ Optimizing Compiler Version 4.1 for 圆4Ĭopyright (C) Microsoft Corporation. For example the Visual Studio 2015 toolset that comes with Visual Studio 2017 identifies itself as:Ĭ:\Program Files (x86)\Microsoft Visual Studio 14.0\VC>cl There is currently no vc15, since Visual Studio 2015 there has just been incremental steps for VC14.
If you have anyĬompliments or complaints to MSDN Support, feel free to contact Visual Studio 20 it is more complicated. This can be beneficial to other community members reading this thread. MSDN Community Support Please remember to click "Mark as Answer" the responses that resolved your issue, and to click "Unmark as Answer" if not. Traditionally, we would release the compiler in a default mode that combines features striding several versions of the C++ language, e.g. >What standard C ++ set as default in vc8, vc9, vc10, vc11, vc12, vc14, vc15?