Hi Michael, Thanks for relaying your experience! I am curious about two things: -I have a working MinGW toolchain and don't want to interrupt it at all. If I install VC++ Express, will it interfere in any way with Scons detection of MinGW or anything like that? -I had experimented a little bit with trying out Eclipse CDT and Netbeans C/C++ plugins to create a project for Csound but never quite got configuration set. I'd like to figure out a way to do settings to do this as I imagine then I could get things setup on both Linux and Windows. Could you describe the layout of the project and settings, or perhaps email a copy of the project file here? (Last I remember the project file for Visual Studio were using xml or some kind of Makefile-like script) Thanks! steven On Feb 16, 2008 5:31 PM, Michael Gogins wrote: > I have had a very pleasant experience with this tool -- so far. On the plus side: > > -- Microsoft has simplified the installation and setup. The Windows SDK headers and libraries are included with the C++ compiler, so there is only one download, and no configuration is required to get up and running to build native Windows applications such as Csound. > > -- The compiler seems to produce faster code. It used to be that MinGW 3.4.2 was faster than Visual C++ 2005. Now Visual C++ 2008 seems faster than MinGW 3.4.2. I would still like to know about the pre-release MinGW 4.1. > > -- The editor is good and can save files with Unix line endings. > > -- The debugger, of course, is just the best. > > -- The compiler can compile in more than one thread at a time, to speed up builds (/MP option), if you have a multi-core machine. This actually does speed builds up noticeably. > > -- The compiler tunes for Intel Core CPUs (such as I have). > > On the down side: > > -- Windows NT, 98, and 95 are no longer supported. > > -- The Windows SDK in the Express Edition comes with fewer helpful tools, but these can still be downloaded separately. For that matter, you can download the Platform SDK 2003 R2 from 2006 and get a whole lot of free stuff. > > -- The excellent ATL and WTL and the usable and standard MFC are not visible, but there are good open source alternatives such as FLTK and wxWidgets. > > I would recommend MSVC 2008 Express Edition over MinGW/MSys for somebody just getting started with C++ programming aimed mainly at Windows. If you don't need IDE GUI designers or MFC, MSVC 2008 Express Edition looks entirely usable for professional programming. > > All in all, nice. > > Regards, > Mike > > > > > > > ------------------------------------------------------------------------- > This SF.net email is sponsored by: Microsoft > Defy all challenges. Microsoft(R) Visual Studio 2008. > http://clk.atdmt.com/MRT/go/vse0120000070mrt/direct/01/ > _______________________________________________ > Csound-devel mailing list > Csound-devel@lists.sourceforge.net > https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/csound-devel > ------------------------------------------------------------------------- This SF.net email is sponsored by: Microsoft Defy all challenges. Microsoft(R) Visual Studio 2008. http://clk.atdmt.com/MRT/go/vse0120000070mrt/direct/01/ _______________________________________________ Csound-devel mailing list Csound-devel@lists.sourceforge.net