VC7 compiled projects still work on 98/ME?

[RickGavin]

Hi all, I asked this question a while ago and people said "yes, but I don't know how". Was looking to upgrade from using VC6 to VC.NET 2003, but I have some apps that still get used on Windows 98/ME etc. It seems like compiling with VC.NET makes the app require MFC7 to which the older windows only have MFC4.2. Is there a way to make the compiler user MFC4.2? I have been looking into the VC.NET project setttings and haven't seen anything about an MFC version to use. Thanks in advanced for any help, Rick

[David Crow]

If Windows 98/Me supports the .Net framework, then MFC 7.x will be installed. Does that help?

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"One must learn from the bite of the fire to leave it alone." - Native American Proverb

[RickGavin]

I can't require the client(s), who are large corporations in some cases, to upgrade all of their old machines. so no. I have to be able to compile the code to use the older MFC. Was just hoping there was away so i could use the new IDE. -Rick

[David Crow]

You can successfully have both compilers on your machine at the same time. Is that an option?

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"One must learn from the bite of the fire to leave it alone." - Native American Proverb

[RickGavin]

yes, I do have both VS6 and VS7 on my dev machine, but I thought it says once you open a project in VS7 it converts it and project will no longer work in VS6. Is that really the only solution, to just have both environemnts, develop in VC7, then "tweak" it to compile in VC6 when needed? -Rick

[David Crow]

Since you cannot use any of the features within VS7 (the target machine prohibits this), why would you want to convert the project to that platform?

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"One must learn from the bite of the fire to leave it alone." - Native American Proverb

[RickGavin]

purely for the nicer editor. and I may be crazy, but installing VC6 on an XP machine seems to make the machine slower in general, boot, execution, etc.

[David Crow]

RickGavin wrote: purely for the nicer editor. I suppose there's no harm in actually opening a .cpp or .h file solely for editing purposes.

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"One must learn from the bite of the fire to leave it alone." - Native American Proverb

[RickGavin]

my development isn't only limitted to those older projects.. and i would like to get learn some of the new features offered by the newer VS7. Basically, I don't want to HAVE to have both VS6 and VS7 installed. As I said, i have seen some odd performance decreases on several machines after installing VS6 so I would like to get away from installing it on future machines. Just seems there should be a way to compile for older MFC support in VS7. that is my question, if anyone knows. -Rick

[David Crow]

RickGavin wrote: Basically, I don't want to HAVE to have both VS6 and VS7 installed. From all that I've read and seen, this is how everyone does it. RickGavin wrote: Just seems there should be a way to compile for older MFC support in VS7. that is my question, if anyone knows. I don't see how this is possible since both libraries (MFC42 and MFC7.x) export roughly the same symbols. A clash is unavoidable. You might try posing your question to the microsoft.public.dotnet.languages.vc newsgroup and see if you can get any other response.

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"One must learn from the bite of the fire to leave it alone." - Native American Proverb

[RickGavin]

DavidCrow wrote: I don't see how this is possible since both libraries (MFC42 and MFC7.x) export roughly the same symbols. A clash is unavoidable. If it was possible to set at the project level to use a specific MFC version of LIBs so that the compile would export the "correct" set, then, there wouldn't be a conflict, theoretically. Upon MFC selection, then the editor would then not offer classes that don't exist for the lower specified version, didn't seem like that big of a stretch, but I suppose its MFC7 only as another thing to "make" people upgrade. I guess I have been using java to long, most everything you can just swap out newer/older versions and recompile, as long as you aren't using something "new" version specific. DavidCrow wrote: You might try posing your question to the microsoft.public.dotnet.languages.vc newsgroup and see if you can get any other response. thanks, i'll give this a try. -Rick

[PJ Arends]

I got two suggestions. The first is to distribute the MFC7 files with your app. The MFC files are redistributable. Or you could statically link MFC. The second, which I have not tried, would be to copy the file Afx.h to your project directory, and include it in your stdafx.h file. The file Afx.h is the file that links the mfc libs to your app. This may or may not work, but might be worth a try.

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[Anonymous]

Put on VC7 directories to visual c 6 directories(IN OPTIONS) and delete the vc7 directories, then the compiler will use the old libs... include files, etc...