REPLY: 1:104/117 63e2c0a4
MSGID: 3:633/267 63e79c0a
CHRS: LATIN-1 2
TZUTC: 1100
TID: hpt/fbsd 1.9.0-cur 2021-04-15
On 2023-02-07 14:09:10, Vitaliy Aksyonov (1:104/117) wrote to andrew clarke:

 VA>>> MS provides free VS community edition. I don't see any reasons
 VA>>> why can't it be used.
 ac>> I'd forgotten about the community edition.

 VA> But it's used for windows builds. Need to be supported too. Windows is
 VA> not very developer-friendly system. I like Unix-style systems much more
 VA> for development.

I had a quick look at Visual Studio 2022 Community today. I was pleasantly
surprised that a Microsoft account login was no longer mandatory to use the VS
Community IDE. On first launch you can now click "Skip for now" at the login
screen. I don't know yet if the IDE's idea of "for now" means "for 30 days" or
"in perpetuity" but it's a nice change.

I assume that was done on purpose, since the IDE's restrictions don't apply if
all you need are the MSVC command-line tools, eg. to build GoldED.

Then if you still want an IDE you can use VSCode instead, which doesn't
require a Microsoft login. In many ways VSCode is superior anyway, except
maybe if you're doing WinForms development in C#.

 ac>> I suppose you could use that, though the modern versions of VS are
 ac>> kind of scary. I mean a 10+ GB download just to compile "Hello
 ac>> world" in C is a bit excessive. The download is bigger than any
 ac>> regular Linux distro. Just for the IDE and C/C++ compiler.

 VA> That is true. I don't know what do they put there. Maybe crypto miner?
 VA> ;)

Ah, of course. :)

Incredibly the full offline download of VS 2022 Community (en-US language
only) totals 40 GB.

Installing basic C++ and C# development tools "only" requires about 12 GB
though.

 ac>> It's strange Microsoft never released a free version of MSVC with
 ac>> just the compiler, header files and libraries but without the IDE.
 ac>> Borland did that in 2000, 23 years ago! I think it even had STL
 ac>> support.

 VA> Who knows, why? Probably there is some secret optimizations. Or maybe
 VA> code is so ugly, that they shy to show it to wide public. :D

Well I wasn't suggesting they open-source it. Just release a free version of
VS Community but with only the command-line tools. Or just make it an option
to not install the IDE when you install VS Community.

Back in 2005 Microsoft released the Windows Server 2003 DDK Tools for free.
That was essentially a full version of MSVC from around 2003, minus the IDE.
However the C & C++ standard libraries were also deliberately excluded, so the
only apps you could realistically build were those that exclusively used Win32
API calls. It was really intended for driver development, though that also
meant if you were an OEM you couldn't easily build software with it to
configure your own drivers. Curiously, they still have it available for
download.

 VA> BTW, their STL implementation was very bad performance wise when they
 VA> introduced VS2015. They focused on following standard even with
 VA> performance penalty. Our company stayed on STLPort for long time
 VA> because of that.

It's good you had an alternative.

I don't know if it would help the STL but the Windows port of Clang might have
better performance than the MSVC compiler. Microsoft even include Clang as an
optional feature with VS2022, though you can also download the latest version
from GitHub.

 VA>>> That's a good question. Main concern here is that FidoNet is
 VA>>> mostly retro hobby and people may want to run it on old computers
 VA>>> and old OSes.
 ac>> Well they can still run the older retro versions.

 VA> That is true. But what if they want to use new features or fix some
 VA> nasty bugs? The more master evolves - the harder would be to backport
 VA> such changes. From other side - that decision will be made sooner or
 VA> later. Then nice features like smart pointers or other may be used.

I don't know. Backporting fixes typically isn't that difficult, provided you
have a period-correct C/C++ compiler. (This is why I'm not so fond of relying
on MSVC for the Windows version, since they keep removing their older versions
from their web site. You used to be able to freely download Visual Studio
Express 2008, which runs like lightning on a modern PC with an SSD.)

Most of the truly nasty bugs in Fido software that's still being used were
fixed years ago with Y2K patches. Software like GoldED may have plenty of
issues but none of them are serious. At least not to my knowledge. There may
be a few Year 2038 bugs in Fidonet software in the future but I don't
anticipate too many problems.

Retro folks still wanting to run BBS software under DOS typically want to run
old versions of things and won't be very interested in new features.

Then there are retro folks (like us) who prefer to use Linux, MacOS or FreeBSD
terminals, and the latest version of GoldED or whatever.

Of course, there is some overlap. :)

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