I have developed WinAPI applications using MinGW without problems. Now, can I do the same with MFC?
I'm just guessing here but I think you would need to buy a copy of Visual Studio to get a license to use MFC. MFC is not well known for its portable use of C++ either. If you are familiar with MFC, you might find the learning curve for Qt to be reasonable (which I use with MinGW). The MFC/MinGW route sounds very painful :)
You cannot. MFC stand for Microsoft Foundation Classes and Microsoft isn't good at supporting any other products than theirs.
You may try to compile MFC under MinGW if you have the source but the result is uncertain.
Related
Some of you might already know that Microsoft is trying to kill desktop development in favor of Metro style apps. The express editions of the new Visual Studio 11 will only support writing Metro style apps. They also won't give you the new compilers as part of the new Windows SDK. The only way to get the compilers is to buy Visual Studio Professional or higher.
Now it's time to find an alternative (alternative compilers for the Windows platform). Any suggestions?
Some links that are related to this issue:
http://visualstudio.uservoice.com/forums/121579-visual-studio/suggestions/2645679-visual-studio-11-express-on-windows-7-and-the-abil
http://blogs.msdn.com/b/visualstudio/archive/2012/05/18/a-look-ahead-at-the-visual-studio-11-product-lineup-and-platform-support.aspx
http://www.microsoft.com/visualstudio/11/en-us/products/express
Gcc/G++ of course. In my opinion it is superior to VC++. In addition, you can use Eclipse CDT as IDE, it is quite usable at the moment (compared to older versions). I work like that on Windows. In addition, you can also work on Linux or MacOS without having to switch to another tool.
1) The Metro and WinRT features are accessible from C++/CX which in turn is built on top of COM, so according to this detailed discussion (SO question on WinRT and C) you can use the latest "Microsoft-only" features with any decent C compiler. Of couse this will require some code generation or just a lot of typing to get the access to basic facilities. I believe there would be a transition period and then the open-source community comes up with some automated solution to consume the WinRT APIs.
2) A quick list of available options right now.
Dev tools: MinGW or Cygwin (GCC toolchain + unix-like tools), Clang maybe, OpenWatcom as a thing from the past
GUI Libraries: FLTK, Qt, wxWidgets, Fox GUI toolkit, librocket (if you are into the OpenGL world)
IDEs: Code::Blocks, Eclipse+CDT, QtCreator
3) There's also a non-C++ way:
The FreePascal+Lazarus to allow Delphi-like RAD
Mono/SharpDevelop
Both options can use C++ code with some bindings.
4) Conclusions
These are the alternatives which give similar results but not always the similar level of comfort.
Yet another possibility would be Qt Creator, which comes with a full toolset targeting Windows (as well as MacOS, Linux, and Symbian). It is definitely somewhat different from VS, so it takes some getting used to, but overall I'd rate it as pretty decent. Qt (the library) generates somewhat mixed feelings -- some dislike its oddities (E.g., MOC), but quite a few consider it the best designed GUI toolkit available.
Don't forget the Netbeans GUI which is also available for windoze. It works great, just install mingw and choose this mingw/bin directory for the compiler tools and mysys/bin/make.exe as the make program
to download
https://netbeans.org/downloads/index.html
they have this plugin for vc++
http://plugins.netbeans.org/plugin/42519/vcc4n-visual-c-compiler-for-netbeans
some install info
https://netbeans.org/community/magazine/html/03/c++/
Another IDE that I havent used but looks good is
http://www.codeblocks.org/
I want to develop a custom window system in c++ that should not depend on win32 library. As an example, Google Chrome has an interface that is not similar to windows own interface. Similarly MPCstar and adobe products have their own interfaces. Please help me where to start for such a project?
You can use cross platform
Qt
or
wxWidgets
but in my opinion Qt is better.
Qt is awesome even if you don't need cross platform support. I assure you after using it you won't understand how anyone could ever develop native GUI on frameworks like Win32 and MFC. Its only shortcoming is the size of the DLLs you'll have to distribute with your app.
BTW is C++ a prerequisite? if not, and you only need windows, use .Net.
I believe Qt should do the trick. I've never used it myself but it is platform independent. I know a few applications that use it, and it seems fine.
Qt and WxWidgets are the better options. And since its GUI I think Qt performs better and has greater support and lots of libraries.
Find Qt here!
I want to port wxwidgets opengl application that will be not library dependent.I want at least that it can be compiled without additonal libraries. I am thinking to port it to MFC or maybe WIN32.What is the most easiest?Maybe you have some other suggestion?
MFC is by far the easiest. It's also the only realistic option if you don't want to use libraries that aren't installed with Visual Studio.
You do realize, that MFC is just another library and works much like wxWidgets. The only difference is, that MFC ships with Visual C++. However if you were to compile with GCC (MinGW), then you'd have to obtain MFC somehow.
Also the whole boilerplate code for event handling and the like is rather prone to write. I say: Stick with wxWidgets, it's cross plattform, well supported and if you're scared by installing and using libraries, then you should not do programming.
Although one answer is already checked, taking the question the way it was worded, the answer is wrong. MFC is just an other dependency, although shipped with Visual Studio. You still need to ensure that the correct version is installed on the users system. The only real way to solve this problem is to go Win32 with WGL. Then you depend on nothing but OS libraries. (You probably still need to install the vcredist package though...)
I have started working with C++ recently and am not comfortable with Visual Studio Development Environment and also I do not have proper understanding of MFC, Win32, ATL, COM Terminologies.
From example point of view, I had taken a simple C++ program to see how it works with Visual Studio Environment and I was having some issues to get that code up and running.
I would like to request if someone could point me to some online resources/books where I can get more understanding about Visual Studio Development Environment from C++ perspective and get some knowledge about MFC, Win32, ATL, COM Terminologies than it would be really very helpful to me.
Note: I have checked MSDN library and some related Microsoft sites but when I see HOW DO I kind of video tutorials they are more from .Net/C#/ASP.Net perspective but I am looking for some online resource for C++/VC++ perspective.
www.stackoverflow.com of course will have plenty of resources around if you look # the right tags
https://stackoverflow.com/questions/tagged/mfc
https://stackoverflow.com/questions/tagged/com
etc.
The Code Project is also a good resource for windows / C++ programming, here are a couple areas to start looking #:
http://www.codeproject.com/KB/MFC/
http://www.codeproject.com/KB/atl/
http://www.codeproject.com/KB/COM/comintro.aspx (via Andy in comments)
The classic book about Win32 is presumably Petzold's. Petzold's book is I think (I've never read it) mostly about GUI programming; whereas the other classic/recommended Win32 book, which is Richter's, is about 'system' (non-GUI) programming.
For learning COM, perhaps Essential COM? Some reviewers praise it, but some others reviews say things like "not for beginners"; but it's how I learned COM, and I found it thorough, low-level, and detailed. It assumes you know C++ (not COM) already.
IMO you don't need books about MFC if you already know C++ and the Win32 API, in which case the reference libraries are sufficient. Alternatively, some people recommend an MFC book like Prosise's.
I learned using Visual Studio IDE and MFC using the Scribble Tutorial. It was a step-by-step tutorial creating a simple MFC application. Unfortunately the tutorial was written for Visual Studio 6.0, and in the meantime almost all wizards and menus changed, so it's not applicable anymore.
The tutorial can be found in MSDN, here, though:
http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/aa716528(VS.60).aspx
The scribble sample source for Visual Studio 2008 can be found here:
http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/f35t8fts.aspx
Don't bother learning ATL, WTL, MFC or COM for now (or at all, really). Just use standard C++ for starters. If you want to write GUI programs, I recommend Qt, it is much easier and fun to use than any of the former APIs.
If you have trouble compiling Qt for Visual C++ you can download the entire Qt SDK and it comes with a C++ IDE called Qt Creator. It uses MinGW as a backend.
I'm under the impression certain compilers only work for making windows applications.
If you want to develop GUI applications and/or go for maximum portability, go for MinGW for compiler, and Qt Creator for IDE (it comes with MinGW bundled).
If you want to stick to Windows, and don't mind coding UI directly using Win32 API, then Visual C++ Express would do the trick.
If you care about portability to Unix, use the mingw compilers which are based on gcc. Gcc is widely available on a lot of architectures and OS. If you only work for Windows, Visual Studio Express might be a better choice in comparison to Codeblocks.
How about Visual Studio Express? This is a complete package with a very nice IDE.
Codeblocks supports many compilers. I recommend using CB with mingw for general purpose usage.
Depends what you want to do. If you want to use POSIX APIs you may want to use mingw. If you distribute to Windows folks, you probably want to use Visual Studio since its compiler is usually better at producing optimized code.
CMake might be something you want to use if you want multiple platforms - it'll create your CodeBlocks/Eclipse/Visual Studio/GNU Make projects for you w/ all the correct settings.
If you are keen on using Codeblocks mingw is a good choice. But C++ is not like Java. It is not write once run everywhere. Also it is not write once compile on different platforms and run everywhere.
You have to change your code for different platforms (win/unix etc...) (eg: socket programming differs on Windows and Linux)
This means that you are not platform independent. So I recommend you to go for a better one. Eclipse is good, community is great but for me QT or Visual Studio (6.0 or 2008 for .Net) would be better.