Visual C++ Cross-Platform Mobile

https://www.visualstudio.com/en-us/explore/cplusplus-mdd-vs

by amatheus • 11 years ago

144 78 11 years ago

npalli• 11 years ago

Microsoft, please port Visual studio to OS X.

BinaryIdiot2• 11 years ago

That would be amazing. I feel like that may be part of their end goal but it would take quite some time before it happens.

Visual Studio, like Eclipse, is really heavy but it's difficult to find an IDE that's better.

edgyswingset• 11 years ago

I suspect it's in the works. I don't know how reliant it is on Win32 APIs (probably awfully reliant), but some work to isolate those calls and attempt to bring POSIX into the fold could certainly be possible. I guess it's really a matter of getting developers on Mac to buy into using Visual Studio, which could be a challenge.

sspiff• 11 years ago

And Linux, really.

myko• 11 years ago

Does VS support C99 yet? While we're making requests I'd like that to get on the list.

plorkyeran3• 11 years ago

Yes, 2013 added support for most of it and 2015 adds a few more things.

DominikD• 11 years ago

It does if you compile with Clang - VS is just a front-end after all. If you're asking about MSVC however, it's incomplete.

yeureka• 11 years ago

That would be amazing. Using XCode is very frustrating. I don't understand how Apple can actually write their software using XCode. No support for bookmarks. Very bad find/replace usability. Scrolling text is painful even on my brand new top of the range MBP. Sometimes I have to switch to Sublime for some editing tasks that are too painful in XCode.

Zergy• 11 years ago

I've started using AppCode for actually writing code and just using XCode for the interface builder. Trying to transition from IntelliJ to XCode was very painful.

reitzensteinm• 11 years ago

The thought of porting a decades old, 50 million line code base from windows to Unix, one that was deemed too complex to retrofit 64 bit support, makes me put my own insignificant development hassles of the past few days in perspective.

No matter how bad it seems, at least I'm not on that team.

revelation2• 11 years ago

I recently had this very same realization after opening some crusty PPTX on Android and seeing those awful animations.

The poor soul that had to port that stuff..

sz4kerto• 11 years ago

Visual Studio is way more than what one sees at the first look. Huge part (and value) of it is the probably unparalleled debugging/profiling capabilities. That are very much Windows specific, porting them to OSX/Linux means writing a lot of new code, not just taking the old stuff and adapting it.

giancarlostoro• 11 years ago

Their first steps I would think would be allowing support for other compilers in Windows like GCC and Clang maybe? But again all this is every programmers pipe dream for now...

tacos2• 11 years ago

Visual Studio in even the shittiest, crufty Windows VM is a better experience than Xcode. Seriously Apple, what is the deal?

pmelendez2• 11 years ago

Shocking enough I have a couple of friends that love XCode... I guess there is room for everybody (Although I can't stand XCode either)

coliveira• 11 years ago

I don't see why people complain so much about Xcode. I haven't used VS for a few years now, but I have bad memories of it. Xcode is in my opinion excellent compared to Visual Studio (especially for C/C++ work).

bernadus_edwin3• 11 years ago

Which xcode? Objective-c or swift? Swift xcode is not really good. Sometime i have to clean cache folder when xcode intelisense is not working

JustSomeNobody• 11 years ago

Microsoft, please don't. Instead, write a version of V.S. specifically for OS X.

api2• 11 years ago

... and Linux, for that matter. They could pwn the IDE space.

VOYD• 11 years ago

never say never.

shanselman• 11 years ago

The WHOLE THING? Do you really want that?

bernadus_edwin3• 11 years ago

Dont, please dont. Save people resource to focus on visual studio windows. Maybe the better solution is use different approach, send minor team to assist xamarin fixing xamarin studio fixbug

mox1• 11 years ago

So it looks like this targets Windows and Android only (maybe iOS via Xamarin...?)

For an alternative the Poco C++ libraries[1] work on Android, iOS and Windows out of the box. Probably not as full featured and you obviously can't use existing Visual C++ code..., but its Open Source and mostly just works.

[1] http://pocoproject.org/

plorkyeran3• 11 years ago

A set of libraries is not an alternative to an IDE.

bernadus_edwin3• 11 years ago

How office team build microsoft office mobile for iOS? As i know, they use c++ shared library. Which IDE on OSX they use?

AlexeyBrin5• 11 years ago

You don't need to use an IDE (like Xcode) on OS X in order to compile standard C++, a Makefile will do just fine. They've probably developed the C++ code on Windows with Visual Studio and tested on Windows and OS X.

For the GUI part it depends, technically you don't need an IDE to create GUIs on OS X. However, most people use Interface Builder from Xcode for this.

fit2rule• 11 years ago

Meh, you know what - this is a bold move of Microsoft, and its quite compelling to see how they have embraced the platform-ology that must be embraced in mobile, these days. I applaud the effort.

But the tricky part of all of this is that so much of the mobile space is more common than people think. Glomming one platform on the other is sort of de-rigeur, in mobile - as it has (and still is and always will be) been on desktop, in the server space, and so on. Tricky thing: you can Run X on A if you use Y and A to make/build/run X. Got Y?

Microsoft: please port Visual Studio to all platforms, including my iPad, kthxbai..

wehadfun• 11 years ago

Why C++ instead of C#?

po1nter• 11 years ago

They'd be competing with Xamarin if they did that.

jmkni• 11 years ago

I think this is Xamarin, it's mentioned once on the page:

...or use these C++ libraries to build complete Xamarin Android Native or Java Native Interface applications.

It's a little unclear though

aikah• 11 years ago

Cause they didn't have to write the NDK.

AlexeyBrin5• 11 years ago

Because C++ is faster and can be compiled to machine code and, at least for now, you will need a 3rd party solution like Xamarin in order to compile and run C# on other platforms.

frozenport2• 11 years ago

If they can build Android apps, why cant they build desktop Linux apps? Or is it doing something else?

AlexeyBrin5• 11 years ago

You are confusing Android with desktop Linux, very different beasts. Just try to open/create a graphical window on a typical Linux distro, after that try to create a simple app on Android and you will understand.

frozenport2• 11 years ago

As a practical matter they are quite different, but this is mostly a linking problem. Both use ELF.

malkia2• 11 years ago

When comes to ease of debugging Visual Studio is outstanding. Not the most powerful debugger in the world (WinDBG is much more advanced), but it's my experience is that it's easy to work with even for new people.

malkia2• 11 years ago

That to be said, when comes to OSX/Linux I had to deal less with debugging (more with logging), but QtCreator's debugging while missing features, saved the day for me while in C++ land, and NetBeans quickly got me to solve java issues (java is something I'm learning/using right now so I'm not entirely versed in what's good in there, but trying out Eclipse several times to debug didn't do it for me - maybe I was too impaitient... where is the damn "Attach to Something" and do it kind of thing...)

revelation2• 11 years ago

In my mind, these two just occupy a very different niche. WinDBG is great when you don't necessarily have the source or symbols at hand, where VS excels with that information available.

pjmlp3• 11 years ago

As I already mentioned in Reddit, this is great for those of us that enjoy using Visual Studio.

If I would be part of the Android team I would feel bad to have Microsoft providing a better developer experience than the team is able (willing) to deliver to NDK users.

mahyarm2• 11 years ago

Next up, full C++11 support? Windows is the laggard here.

pjmlp3• 11 years ago

I guess you aren't aware of commercial UNIX (Aix, HP-UX...) and embedded compilers support level.

mahyarm2• 11 years ago

There is a difference between niche things like that, and being the most installed full desktop os in the world. I repeatedly run into C++ projects saying no C++11 because of windows, and only windows.

brown9-2• 11 years ago

Does anyone else find the use of "acquisition" a little weird here? I don't think anyone ever talks how "easy this software is to acquire" when they talk about features.

piyush_soni• 11 years ago

If it works good, this might do wonders for Microsoft's Windows phone app store. They are surely hoping people will be willing to build and upload the apps on their platform as well once they're written in an almost platform independent manner.

karmakaze• 11 years ago

I'm quite suspect on how is 'cross-platform' feat is achieved. Non-UI code shares well. As for the other: "Windows, iOS, and Android app development" ... "Free Microsoft extensions available for download for iOS and Android development" may not as positive as it's spun to be.

Visual C++ Cross-Platform Mobile

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