Free VC++ Compiler

[Jim Moy]

I noticed an article on /. reporting that Microsoft is now giving away
their C++ compiler:

http://msdn.microsoft.com/visualc/vctoolkit2003/

Maybe a boon to simplifying Ruby builds? At least making it available
to people who don't have a copy of VC++.

Jim

 

[Lothar Scholz]

Hello Jim,

Tuesday, April 20, 2004, 2:01:49 AM, you wrote:

JM> I noticed an article on /. reporting that Microsoft is now giving away
JM> their C++ compiler:

JM> http://msdn.microsoft.com/visualc/vctoolkit2003/

JM> Maybe a boon to simplifying Ruby builds? At least making it available
JM> to people who don't have a copy of VC++.

No. The license forbids to use it to build and distribute GPL
applications. A really interesting way Microsoft has choosen to fight
Linux and GPL.

 

[Lothar Scholz]

Hello Mark,

Tuesday, April 20, 2004, 4:14:09 AM, you wrote:


MJR> It does no such thing; that's just /. FUD. What it forbids you to do is
MJR> redistribute the components if doing so would put them under the GPL, which
MJR> seems reasonable: "you can use our compiler for free, but you can't make
MJR> our DLLs fall under the GPL by redistributing them with GPL code."

So compiling against the static version of "msvcrt.lib" is okay ?

But unfortunately there are a few memory leaks when doing this,
at least _beginthread, _beginthreadEx are known to have problems in
the static version. And we must also compile all extension ".so" files
against the static lib, not really nice. So i think we still need
prebuild windows versions.

Or we use Open Watcom or/and Borland C++ for windows compilation.

 

[Jim Moy]

So compiling against the static version of "msvcrt.lib" is okay ?
...
And we must also compile all extension ".so" files
against the static lib, not really nice. So i think we still need
prebuild windows versions.

I don't quite follow this discussion since I've never built ruby myself,
I'm just a ruby "user" at this point.

However, my impression from reading the rubygarden wiki was that ruby
with dependencies on only msvcrt.dll requires VC++; you may be able to
build under MinGW but it isn't the mainstream way to develop ruby code.
And so you really want to have a purchased copy of VC++. (This may be
a mistaken conclusion, please educate me...)

If so, I was thinking that with this new tools release by Microsoft,
some of that may be alleviated, and so with a bit of work on the build
process we could build ruby in a way that would fit the VC++ development
model, both free and purchased.

Jim

 

[Gawnsoft]

I noticed an article on /. reporting that Microsoft is now giving away
their C++ compiler:

http://msdn.microsoft.com/visualc/vctoolkit2003/

Maybe a boon to simplifying Ruby builds? At least making it available
to people who don't have a copy of VC++.

The release is only for Win2k and upwards.


Cheers,
Euan
Gawnsoft: http://www.gawnsoft.co.sr
Symbian/Epoc wiki: http://html.dnsalias.net:1122
Smalltalk links (harvested from comp.lang.smalltalk) http://html.dnsalias.net/gawnsoft/smalltalk