Microsoft Visual C++ is the Internet Explorer of C++ compilers.
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C++ compiler support - cppreference.com[^] While the MSVC compiler has improved significantly in recent years it still lags: Note all the asterisks next to the C++20 library and language features. The bottom line is those are partial or otherwise "supported with qualifications" which at the end of the day means your standard C++20 code might not compile for MSVC without conditional compiles. Like I said, it has gotten better, but so did internet explorer before it was replaced. I prefer to be able to use -std=C++20 and be confident that my standard code will compile, or if it won't, then it's *my fault* - metaprogramming is difficult enough when you know what you're using is fully supported. If it's not, tracking down the error can be a nightmare - I speak from unfortunate experience. Additionally, the fact that MSVC consistently lags behind in standards support by years (i'm not saying lags behind other compilers, I'm saying lags behind the standard itself) means if I want my code to compile across compilers I have to dumb it down for the lowest common denominator. And between the major compilers, that lowest common denominator comes up as MSVC. I guess some compiler had to fill that role, but they were going to be my target whoever they were, because they're going to be the reason that I can't have nice things.
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Most of those asterisks seem to just show a different kind of version number. 20 years ago, MSVC lagged seriously behind the standard (I'm talkin' to you MSVC 6). Today, conformance is excellent, though for a given feature it may take longer to get into MSVC than the open-source compiler in which the feature was prototyped (duh). I'm comparing compilers for a book on optimization, and so far I haven't encountered a situation in which the three compilers didn't all support a feature, though I accept that they exist. There are in fact differences in the way the compilers interpret the standard, but this has always been more a bug in the standard than in any of the compilers, or a situation in which one compiler accepts a more generous (nonconforming) syntax than another.
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You can run MSVC++ in C++17 mode, unlike IE which only got standards mode in betas, but not in releases.
Fair enough. But C++20 support is still flaky
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Most of those asterisks seem to just show a different kind of version number. 20 years ago, MSVC lagged seriously behind the standard (I'm talkin' to you MSVC 6). Today, conformance is excellent, though for a given feature it may take longer to get into MSVC than the open-source compiler in which the feature was prototyped (duh). I'm comparing compilers for a book on optimization, and so far I haven't encountered a situation in which the three compilers didn't all support a feature, though I accept that they exist. There are in fact differences in the way the compilers interpret the standard, but this has always been more a bug in the standard than in any of the compilers, or a situation in which one compiler accepts a more generous (nonconforming) syntax than another.
I'm guilty of glossing over most of that link. My fault. Serves me right for digging it up while in the middle of other things.. I admit a lot of my distaste for MSVC is historical. Pre 2017 it wasn't great, but since then I haven't used it as much as I used to because I do cross compiling mostly these days for MCUs and such. That it didn't support SFINAE was just unacceptable, IMO. At the end of the day, I don't trust their compiler products, and frankly, they earned that. It will take some time - a consistent showing of compliance over several standards versions for me to want to rely on them again.
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Yeah but look at their C++20 support compared to GCC. Someone should remind MS it's 2021. I don't want to have to find out they don't support something the hard way when I'm in the middle of coding. I'm not using C++20 at the moment, but I plan on switching over soon. If MS has been consistent about anything, it's being years behind the standards. So I stand by the title of the post Also if a codebase won't work with GCC I'd argue the problem is almost certainly with the codebase, not gcc. Because 1. GCC is a modern, popular compiler that is very standards compliant compared to other offerings. If your source can't work with it you're shooting yourself in the foot 2. What about your code isn't actually C++, but really a variant of C++ involving vendor specific extensions? It's not always the issue, but I find it usually is.
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And you really want to fight the new compiler bugs? It is only the second bugfix for VS 2017 that does not contain a C++ compiler fix - I guess they gave up, not finished.
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And you really want to fight the new compiler bugs? It is only the second bugfix for VS 2017 that does not contain a C++ compiler fix - I guess they gave up, not finished.
I don't typically use MSVC. In fact, I don't even test my code to see if it compiles on MSVC anymore - just clang and gcc. If MSVC can't compile it, MSVC is broken, as far as I'm concerned. That's how I treat it.
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I don't typically use MSVC. In fact, I don't even test my code to see if it compiles on MSVC anymore - just clang and gcc. If MSVC can't compile it, MSVC is broken, as far as I'm concerned. That's how I treat it.
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But... gcc is broken, too[^].
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But... gcc is broken, too[^].
I think you misunderstand me. All compilers have bugs. The question is whether standards compliant code will compile with them or not. Sure, gcc has some bugs, and some of those bugs might impact the above, but they have a lot of catching up to do if they want to ride the Microsoft fail train. This was especially true on previous versions of MSVC, but even today they're still lagging behind clang and GCC in terms of C++ standards support. At the end of the day, that's what I care about. Like, as an analogy (but i don't do webdev) I don't care that Chrome may have a rendering bug. I care that it supports HTML5, so that my HTML5 code will theoretically render capably under that system. If there's a specific bug I can deal with that, but that's knowing that Google knows it's a bug and is treating it like a bug. Consider the different approach MS took with IE. It mirrors their treatment of C++ in terms of standards. Microsoft's lack of standards compliance isn't treated as a bug. At least historically (which I can speak to with confidence, as opposed to their specific culture and attitude *today* WRT to C++) has been that it's by design, and if you code in the Microsoft ecosystem, you just have to suck it up. Maybe they'll get around to it on the next major version, maybe not. That's a rather marked difference in terms of what I can expect and what I can rely on when I go to design my code. In the first case, worst case I have a conditional for Chrome, to work around the bug, and make a note of it in the source. In the second case, I basically have to fork, because not only is it not going to be fixed, but it's probably not the only thing they *decided* to do differently.
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Quote:
cl.exe is a tool that controls the Microsoft C++ (MSVC) C and C++ compilers
And cl is the command I use for compiling in VSCode; nothing visual about it (except when my simple mistakes get spat out. :(( ).
Text like a command line is also "visual"
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Fair enough. But C++20 support is still flaky
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Text like a command line is also "visual"
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Indeed. C++20-support in MSVC++ is labeled experimental. As it is for Clang and GCC. Ok, Clang calls it's status "partial", but that doesn't read any better than "experimental".
From CPPreference.com's compiler support page (i don't have the link handy, sorry), GCC's C++20 support looks pretty good. Are you looking at v10 or are you considering an earlier version?
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From CPPreference.com's compiler support page (i don't have the link handy, sorry), GCC's C++20 support looks pretty good. Are you looking at v10 or are you considering an earlier version?
Real programmers use butterflies
[C++ Standards Support in GCC- GNU Project - Free Software Foundation (FSF)](https://gcc.gnu.org/projects/cxx-status.html#cxx20)