Visual Studio 2012 will build apps that can run on XP

http://blogs.msdn.com/b/vcblog/archive/2012/06/15/10320645.aspx

by ryanmolden • 14 years ago

82 20 14 years ago

blogs.msdn.com

blackhole• 14 years ago

I have to admit I am honestly surprised that Microsoft actually listened to it's customers on this issue. However, the wording in the post makes it a bit vague on whether the compiler itself will simply also target XP, or if there will be some project flag to make it compatible with XP.

rrreese2• 14 years ago

Microsoft for all its many faults is very good at listening to customer feedback. Once you consider that their main customers are enterprise and government you begin to understand how many of their decisions get made.

podperson2• 14 years ago

+1.

The thing to understand about Microsoft is that its customers are OEMs and Enterprise first, and end-users somewhere in the distance.

That said, all this means is that VS 2012 will target the .NET runtime which will continue to run on XP.

molmalo• 14 years ago

I may be wrong, but from what I understood, it's going to be the same as it is today with .Net. I mean, in .Net, you can choose the target framework in Project properties [1].

So, by saying "Multi-targeting enables developers to take advantage of the new features of the IDE", I think that they will make the same thing... You choose your "target framework" (compiler + libraries) inside Project properties, and that's it, the IDE handles the rest.

http://www.codeproject.com/KB/WPF/openglinwpf/TargetFramewor...

Negitivefrags• 14 years ago

Multi-targeting was how the XP support worked before this announcement. The problem was that the main reason to upgrade is to get the new C++11 langauge features, not new IDE features.

With the previous approach you still can't use the new features because the XP support is simply to use the VS2010 compiler within the VS2012 IDE.

This new announcement is that the VS2012 toolchain will support XP directly.

As someone who can only use the subset of C++11 features that both GCC and MSVC both support, I am very pleased with this news.

acqq3• 14 years ago

No, their whole article is lawyer/marketoid speak:

They spent most of the article to claim "we already have Multi Targeting" only to wrap inside that actually you need another version of VS (the older VS 2010) to target XP:

"Developers wishing to target Windows XP can use Visual Studio’s C++ multi-targeting feature, which enables the use of the Visual Studio 2010 compiler from within the new IDE."

Note 2010. Note that you use new IDE but you can't use no new language features from 2012, meaning you don't use anything from 2012 except the new (black icons) IDE, everything is compiled with VS 2010 then.

Then finally in the last few sentences: "Later this fall, Microsoft will provide an update to Visual Studio 2012 that will enable C++ applications to target Windows XP."

There will be an update for VS 2012 sometime this fall with which you'll be first time able to use VS 2012 to compile software which will run on XP. Before that update comes VS 2012 won't produce the native code that runs on XP.

I'm very glad they decided there will be this update. They reversed the decision based on which they made the release of the Visual Studio.

tomjen3• 14 years ago

Microsoft has always fucked their partners but they take really good care of their developers and getting started with some pretty powerful stuff (assuming you don't mind using microsofts stack) is cheap and relatively easy.

binarycrusader• 14 years ago

They take really good care of their developers, unless you're talking about C++11, C99, or OpenGL support.

In which case, NIH-syndrome kicks into full gear.

Their C++11 support is laughable compared to Apple's at this point, they could have bothered to support some of the most basic things in C99, and their continued, purposeful rejection of OpenGL ES on their mobile platforms shows they just don't get it.

Don't get me wrong, they're doing better than they used to in some areas (Windows Phone 8 is proof of that), but they still do some laughably crazy things that are not exactly "tak[ing] really good care of their developers".

topbanana• 14 years ago

This was announced a few weeks ago.

Visual Studio 2012 still won't run on XP, and more importantly .Net 4.5 cannot be installed on XP.

IanDrake• 14 years ago

I can't imagine this surprised anyone.

gouranga• 14 years ago

No one is unhappy about that. Post 4.0 frameworks are not that compelling feature-wise.

Visual Studio 2012 will build apps that can run on XP

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