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Windows Phone was fun to develop for (not). Especially their native C compilation setup was a nightmare, we had to rewrite most of our code that worked fine on

Windows Phone was fun to develop for (not). Especially their native C compilation setup was a nightmare, we had to rewrite most of our code that worked fine on Android and iOS to be ANSI C compatible so that the Visual C 6.0 compiler liked it enough.

slipstream- 9y ago
MS's compiler is annoying, it'll only support anything more modern than ANSI C if you give your files a .cpp extension...
- orbifold 9y ago
  That is not true, it is perfectly happy to compile files that have a .C and .H extension as modern C++ :).
  - joelhaasnoot 9y ago
    I think this was only true when targeting 8.0 and the 7.0 or 7.1 target for 'native' code was an old compiler that got bundled which didn't do this. It was a bit of a nightmare. THe funnest part was that we were at a weekend long MSFT hackathon. None of the (Dutch) dev-types had ever used C(++) code and so couldn't be much help.
futurix 9y ago
I think you are confusing Windows Phone and ancient Windows Mobile.
- niftich 9y ago
  In fairness, despite Windows Mobile being positively ancient, the constant reboot of Windows' mobile OS, even once it was called Windows Phone, was a contributing factor: customer confusion, developer confusion, variability of upgrade paths, and just market fatigue.
- seanmcdirmid 9y ago
  I think towards the end, Windows Phone was rebranded back to Windows Mobile again. See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Windows_10_Mobile https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Windows_10_Mobile
- joelhaasnoot 9y ago
  No, unfortunately, Windows Phone 7.1 and 8.0 had very limited support for C/C++ libraries (native code). The support that it did have was based off old compilers (maybe it was the only thing they had at the time for ARM processors?). I believe 7.0 had no support for this.
  - Kipters 9y ago
    7.x (public) SDK had no support for C/C++ whatsoever, you needed special access and a private SDK to use it. Windows Phone 8.0 allowed C++ 11
    - joelhaasnoot 9y ago
      Hmm, ok. There may have also been a C/C++ difference somewhere in there. We ended up being able to compile our journey planer code for Windows Phone after quite a few hours of rewriting stuff and wading through compiler errors. (incidentally, at a Microsoft hackathon, hosted at a former/historic prison complex)
    - xorblurb 9y ago
      VS2012 (I guess this was the compiler, maybe it has been upgraded after) had a quite limited support of C++ 11. Only starting with VS2015 (and then maybe even update 2 IIRC) we had what we can call C++ 11 (for the purpose of not having to port code for it, or such port to be easy, so missing 1 or 2 language and library features can be OK, but missing half of them: less so).

slipstream- 9y ago

MS's compiler is annoying, it'll only support anything more modern than ANSI C if you give your files a .cpp extension...

orbifold 9y ago
That is not true, it is perfectly happy to compile files that have a .C and .H extension as modern C++ :).
- joelhaasnoot 9y ago
  I think this was only true when targeting 8.0 and the 7.0 or 7.1 target for 'native' code was an old compiler that got bundled which didn't do this. It was a bit of a nightmare. THe funnest part was that we were at a weekend long MSFT hackathon. None of the (Dutch) dev-types had ever used C(++) code and so couldn't be much help.

futurix 9y ago

I think you are confusing Windows Phone and ancient Windows Mobile.

niftich 9y ago
In fairness, despite Windows Mobile being positively ancient, the constant reboot of Windows' mobile OS, even once it was called Windows Phone, was a contributing factor: customer confusion, developer confusion, variability of upgrade paths, and just market fatigue.
seanmcdirmid 9y ago
I think towards the end, Windows Phone was rebranded back to Windows Mobile again. See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Windows_10_Mobile https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Windows_10_Mobile
joelhaasnoot 9y ago
No, unfortunately, Windows Phone 7.1 and 8.0 had very limited support for C/C++ libraries (native code). The support that it did have was based off old compilers (maybe it was the only thing they had at the time for ARM processors?). I believe 7.0 had no support for this.
- Kipters 9y ago
  7.x (public) SDK had no support for C/C++ whatsoever, you needed special access and a private SDK to use it. Windows Phone 8.0 allowed C++ 11
  - joelhaasnoot 9y ago
    Hmm, ok. There may have also been a C/C++ difference somewhere in there. We ended up being able to compile our journey planer code for Windows Phone after quite a few hours of rewriting stuff and wading through compiler errors. (incidentally, at a Microsoft hackathon, hosted at a former/historic prison complex)
  - xorblurb 9y ago
    VS2012 (I guess this was the compiler, maybe it has been upgraded after) had a quite limited support of C++ 11. Only starting with VS2015 (and then maybe even update 2 IIRC) we had what we can call C++ 11 (for the purpose of not having to port code for it, or such port to be easy, so missing 1 or 2 language and library features can be OK, but missing half of them: less so).