4 ms·

The biggest problem is that they apparently will no longer provide free compilers. That will make continuous integration windows backends even harder to deal wi

by lucian1900 14y ago

The biggest problem is that they apparently will no longer provide free compilers. That will make continuous integration windows backends even harder to deal with than they currently are, and basically unavailable to most open source projects.

astrodust 14y ago
There's always the Cygwin + gcc + duct tape solution.
- lucian1900 14y ago
  Cygwin+gcc isn't an option, and may no longer work in win8 anyway. Mingw may work, but it's still not a first-party tool, and it's still not fully compatible to microsoft's compilers.
  - koenigdavidmj 14y ago
    Why may Cygwin no longer work on Windows 8?
    - lucian1900 14y ago
      It's already shoddy on Win7, with all the emulation it does.
      - koenigdavidmj 14y ago
        I use it everyday. Yes, it has quirks. Yes, it's slow. But that's not because of Windows 7; it's always been like that. Is there anything new that Windows 8 is doing that will cause Cygwin to regress?
- ajasmin 14y ago
  Mingw would make more sense than Cygwin as VC++ replacement. Cygwin is for porting over Unix code.
josephcooney 14y ago
Really? I'm pretty sure csc.exe (the C# compiler) ships with the .NET client re-distributable, for free. On any box that has any kind of .NET installed I can fire up notepad and a command prompt and compile something. Are you confusing IDE with compiler? Or talking about only the C++ compiler? There are also a plethora of free IDEs Qt Creator, SharpDevelop, Monodevelop et.al. I don't see what the big deal is.
- statictype 14y ago
  The article mentions that the Windows 8 SDK will no longer ship with a compiler tool chain. So, it's not just the IDE - the compilers are also gone - you could still use older compilers, just like you could use older versions of Visual Studio.
- marshray 14y ago
  We're not talking about C#, we're talking about native code C++ development with the Win32 API. What most commercial Windows apps are still written in and what Microsoft used to call "Windows Platform SDK" or just "the Windows SDK".
  - josephcooney 14y ago
    csc.exe ships with the windows SDK too....

astrodust 14y ago

There's always the Cygwin + gcc + duct tape solution.

lucian1900 14y ago
Cygwin+gcc isn't an option, and may no longer work in win8 anyway. Mingw may work, but it's still not a first-party tool, and it's still not fully compatible to microsoft's compilers.
- koenigdavidmj 14y ago
  Why may Cygwin no longer work on Windows 8?
  - lucian1900 14y ago
    It's already shoddy on Win7, with all the emulation it does.
    - koenigdavidmj 14y ago
      I use it everyday. Yes, it has quirks. Yes, it's slow. But that's not because of Windows 7; it's always been like that. Is there anything new that Windows 8 is doing that will cause Cygwin to regress?
ajasmin 14y ago
Mingw would make more sense than Cygwin as VC++ replacement. Cygwin is for porting over Unix code.

josephcooney 14y ago

Really? I'm pretty sure csc.exe (the C# compiler) ships with the .NET client re-distributable, for free. On any box that has any kind of .NET installed I can fire up notepad and a command prompt and compile something. Are you confusing IDE with compiler? Or talking about only the C++ compiler? There are also a plethora of free IDEs Qt Creator, SharpDevelop, Monodevelop et.al. I don't see what the big deal is.

statictype 14y ago
The article mentions that the Windows 8 SDK will no longer ship with a compiler tool chain. So, it's not just the IDE - the compilers are also gone - you could still use older compilers, just like you could use older versions of Visual Studio.
marshray 14y ago
We're not talking about C#, we're talking about native code C++ development with the Win32 API. What most commercial Windows apps are still written in and what Microsoft used to call "Windows Platform SDK" or just "the Windows SDK".
- josephcooney 14y ago
  csc.exe ships with the windows SDK too....