VC11 CTP for XP

[Jeremy Collake]

(prior to thread update/change)

As some of you may know, I've been forced to use Visual C++ v10's platform toolset (VC10) inside Visual Studio 2012. This is because VC11, native to Visual Studio 2012, will not create images compatible with XP/2003. Support is supposed to be restored in some update 'later this fall'.

In the meantime, I am tempted to create a special VC11 build every once and a while. The problem is that it is a pain in the butt, and could cause confusion. Still, for Vista and above users, this would be a cool build to have.

When VC11 gets XP/2003 support, then everyone will get the advantages of Microsoft's C++ compiler's latest update.

[Jeremy Collake]

Nevermind, this issue is mute.. as of two days ago, things changed.

The CTP for the VC11 update that adds XP/2003 targetting support has been released: See here

Therefore, the next beta series will use this new version of the VC11 CRT! That means more compiler optimizations, and some really cool ones are in VC11.

[BenYeeHua]

Ya, and get ready for the x86 windows 8 tablet also
It need less power consumption.

[Jeremy Collake]

New platform toolsets. They created a specially crafted build of VC11 to support XP/2003. Interesting. There may be some important NT6+ optimization or security improvement present, thus the rationale for the splicing.

The new toolset being v110_xp

[edkiefer]

So does it still support all optimizations, seems they want you to run both compilers for XP and vista+ ?

[Jeremy Collake]

Well, they are basically saying: Use this version of the CRT if, and only if, you need XP/2003 support. That means there is some advantage to using vanilla VC11. I believe it is most certainly security feature related, not performance optimizations. The code it generates is [almost] always going to be compatible regardless, but not so for security features that may vary from OS version to OS version. There are several added to VC11 as well, so that makes this more likely.

As a side note, the first build with this CTP of Update 1 used is the current beta, 6.0.1.63.

[Jeremy Collake]

BTW, I had to, of course, go back to VC10 for the final build (actually for the beta that preceded it). I encountered at least one strange issue using VC11-xp that required further investigation, and was potentially a fault in the CRT. Since this is a CTP (not-final from Microsoft), I can not use it in a final anyway. Hopefully they will issue the final Update to VS2012 and VC11 soon. Until then, except for that one strange irregularity, I'm ready to go with it (other compatibility issues addressed).