Quote:Original post by Vampyre_Dark
XNA 3.0 CTP works in 2008, and was just released in the last 2 weeks.

Have you used the latest CTP? I was curious if it was VS only or if it plugged into C# Express as well. I was using VS05 until C# express 08 came out, I love it and would much rather be coding in it than in 05. I an't afford to upgrade from VS05 to VS08 so I'm hoping the CTP works with it (without having to add all the references myself)

Thanks for sharing your experiences :)

/MP sounds good - any decreases in compile times are welcome. Unfortunately the Intel compiler plugin that I'm forced to use (because VC's handling of SSE intrinsics sucks) apparently does not benefit from this, or at least I haven't noticed a difference.

> - improved Intellisense working in background
hm, I've been using Visual Assist for a while, which gives a relevant boost to typing speed and productivity. Since it does its own source parsing, I have actually disabled Intellisense outright (currently by creating a directory with the same name as the NCB file, but that gives an annoying messagebox when opening the project).

Oh by the way - anyone hoping that Intellisense isn't STILL laughably bad performance-wise need only fire up FileMon and see that the .ncb file IOs consist of: 2..4 byte chunks. Yay for serialization that doesn't use memory buffers like everyone else but goes straight to the filesystem. *shakes head*

> - TR1 and MFC update (features pack)
As Silvermace has said, this just requires Boost and a few `using' directives in the PCH.

> - better managed/native interop
> - Vista style for native applications
I don't use either of these.

So that explains my perception that this was a disappointing release: the scant few changes are mooted by external plugins/libraries anyway.
For a while, it actually seemed that all they had done was change the UI implementation a bit (woohoo, menu bars look slightly different) and bump the version numbers. I really hate that the sln files are deliberately incompatible even though they don't appear to have changed in the past 3 releases.

Upgrading compilers isn't always possible because some large frameworks (e.g. ERDAS) only support a given VS version. Yes, we can install several compilers, but that entails keeping in sync the .sln files of shared projects. This is only really feasible with something like Premake, which means one of the advantages of VS (a nice UI for project settings) is lost.
Now the next time I evaluate other IDEs and find their debugger is nearly as good as VS, the conclusion just might be reached to abandon the MS ship. (VS is basically the only thing keeping me running Windows)

Quote:Original post by Scionwest

Quote:Original post by Vampyre_Dark
XNA 3.0 CTP works in 2008, and was just released in the last 2 weeks.

Have you used the latest CTP? I was curious if it was VS only or if it plugged into C# Express as well. I was using VS05 until C# express 08 came out, I love it and would much rather be coding in it than in 05. I an't afford to upgrade from VS05 to VS08 so I'm hoping the CTP works with it (without having to add all the references myself)

I can't even make sense of this question.

Quote:Originally posted by XNA 3.0 CTP download page

There’s three other important things we want you to know before you dig in:

o Either Visual Studio 2008 Standard Edition and higher (C# language support must be installed), or Visual C# 2008 Express Edition are required to install and run the XNA Game Studio 3.0 CTP. Visual Studio 2005 SKUs are not supported with XNA Game Studio 3.0 and beyond. However, you do not need to uninstall Visual Studio 2005 or XNA Game Studio 2.0, as those products will work side-by-side with Visual Studio 2008 and XNA Game Studio 3.0 CTP.
o This current CTP does not enable Xbox 360 game development. Only Windows and Zune are supported in this CTP. If you want to build and deploy games for the Xbox 360, you must continue using XNA Game Studio 2.0 for now.
o This CTP doesn't work in 64 bit yet. We plan to support it before RTM.

Quote:Original post by Jan Wassenberg


> - improved Intellisense working in background
hm, I've been using Visual Assist for a while, which gives a relevant boost to typing speed and productivity. Since it does its own source parsing, I have actually disabled Intellisense outright (currently by creating a directory with the same name as the NCB file, but that gives an annoying messagebox when opening the project).

Oh by the way - anyone hoping that Intellisense isn't STILL laughably bad performance-wise need only fire up FileMon and see that the .ncb file IOs consist of: 2..4 byte chunks. Yay for serialization that doesn't use memory buffers like everyone else but goes straight to the filesystem. *shakes head*

It looks like MS is aware that they didn't really improve intellisense from last version since the next version of VC++ seems like it is going to be quite different as far as intellisense goes since they are going to be using a SQL database!

For Visual Studio 10, which is the next release after Visual Studio 2008, we are going to do a lot of things differently. For one, the NCB file is being eliminated. The NCB file was very similar to a BSC file and the IDE needed to load the entire thing into memory in order to use it. It was very hard to add new features to it (i.e. template support was bolted on) and some lookups required walking through a lot of information. Instead of this, we will be using SQL Server Compact for our data store. We did a lot of prototyping to make sure that it was the right choice and it exceeded our expectations. Using Compact will allow us to easily make changes to our schema, change indexes if needed, and avoid loading the entire thing into memory. We currently have this implemented and we are seeing increased performance and lower memory usage.

Quote:
Explain why it's better handled? /MP was created for that reason.

There is a not so subtle difference between /MP compiler switch and parallel make. According to MSDN:

Quote:
The /MP compiler option can significantly reduce build time when you compile many files. To improve build time, the compiler creates up to processMax copies of itself, and then uses those copies to compile your source files at the same time. The /MP option applies to compilations, but not to linking or link-time code generation. By default the /MP option is off.

Also, if you use a different compiler than the one that comes with MSVC, it does not help.... I would have rathered they tweaked nmake (I think that is MSVC make utility) to do parallel builds and us nmake to build.

the major stinker with /MP is:

Quote:
The following table lists compiler options and language features that are incompatible with the /MP option:

(snip)

/Yc Writes a precompiled header file.

so if the wrong headers get modified and you use precompiled headers, there can be some headaches.

Quote:
Sorry, but are you sure you know what you're talking about here? From what I understand, MS's STL is basically Dinkumware's, at this point. Microsoft has made a few stupid mods for "extra safety" which can be disabled.

I was not clear: the addition of TR1 to their STL is nice, but there are other STL's one can use which already have TR1 (and even at that if you use boost, most of what you want in TR1 is in boost anyways), secondly, the STL of MSVC is not very good (it is great that is is integrated with the debugger though, also the mods they adder were like when comparing iterators make sure they come from the same container, which is useful in debugging as well), even in release builds it can leave a very, very bad taste in one's mouth. MS has come a long way since VC6, but there are better STL's to use. The point being that if one is upgrading just for TR1, then a potentially better solution is to use a different STL.

Quote:
I agree that MFC is a poor choice for GUIs at this point. STL and Boost obviously can't completely replace MFC, since MFC is mostly "designed" (using that term loosely) for GUI tasks. I've used Qt instead of MFC for GUI tasks with a lot of success.

My _personal_ opinion is that the faster one gets away from MFC, the better. Porting a project that uses MFC off of Windows is a huge job... there are a LOT of GUI libraries out there (you mention Qt, and there is also GTK+, and a variety of very light weight ones such as FLTK)... but if you are on a project which is Windows only, then it is kind of ok to use MFC, but every now and then I hear rumor noises that MS wants to end MFC.... also one reason one may wish to upgrade is a newer version of ATL, but that really is Windows only goop.

oh well, my 2 cents.

Quote:It looks like MS is aware that they didn't really improve intellisense from last version since the next version of VC++ seems like it is going to be quite different as far as intellisense goes since they are going to be using a SQL database!

Yep, sounds pretty good. Now it remains to be seen if that is actually implemented or whether it goes the way of various Vista features that were axed.
Actually this is kind of moot because VC10 is years away. Given the frequency of previous releases and that it's still in "in early development stages", I doubt we'll see anything before 2010; probably later.

What else do I read about this VS10?
Visual Studio 10, will add expanded IntelliSense capabilities, as well as support for SQL Server Compact databases, a call hierarchy capability for managed code, and a more integrated approach to the Team environment. Visual Studio 10 is to have a completely redesigned interface.
Wow, a completely redesigned interface. Strange, that would've been the very last thing on my list of things to implement or fix.

Quote:Original post by TheUnbeliever
It's probably worth mentioning that, if you sign up for Microsoft's various newsletters, you get alerted to their various give-aways. I've picked up Vista Ultimate, Office 2007 Professional and VS2008 Standard & Professional this way.

Nice. Specifically what newsletters are you signed up for?

Give away as in Microsoft gave those products away for free?

Damn - I want to be on that too!