Has anybody tried to download the new free Visual Studio programs, and compiled the ET source with it?
I’m downloading at the moment, and will see if it works.
CD images with the different version are available here: http://msdn.microsoft.com/vstudio/express/support/install/default.aspx
Website describing these versions: http://msdn.microsoft.com/vstudio/express/default.aspx
Visual C++ 2005 Beta 2 from the express program seems to build fine, but with extra
warnings. You might have to tweak a few libraries for final link, but as of ET-SDK 2.60,
it builds pretty much by double-clicking on .sln file and answering a few questions
about ignoring source revision control. I had one issue where to link one of the
modules mmlib or some other dll had to be removed from properties.
FWIW, VS2005 C++ Prof Edition compiles ET fine. Plus it is much more standards compliant than before 
mingw is free, forever. no restrictions. (no 1 year cutoff date for example)
mingw is c99 compliant (VC++ isnt), and VC++ likes to do insanely retarded things like put readonly-constant-data in writable memory segments. mingw also often produces better code (et compiled with mingw gives higher fps than one compiled with VC++)
mingw is free, forever. no restrictions. (no 1 year cutoff date for example)
mingw is c99 compliant (VC++ isnt), and VC++ likes to do insanely retarded things like put readonly-constant-data in writable memory segments. mingw also often produces better code (et compiled with mingw gives higher fps than one compiled with VC++)[/quote]If I’m right Mingw is a ported GNU compiler, altered to link programs so they can run without extra libraries installed on some other system.
And the gcc IS damn good.
BTW: Microsoft has a tendency to leave standards and alter it to make their own. Even it may have improved, do not expect them to follow the standards.
This free version of msvc 2005 is not time limited, it doesn’t expire, this version of msvc is free to use forever, for commercial applications and all. In 1 year, the download will simply stop being available, the product doesn’t expire. For anyone that bothered to read the release notes this would have been obvious.
MSVC is the compiler for probably the majority of game developers, and this offer to use it with optimizing compiler for free along with the excellent IDE for any purpose is pretty damn good. vc6 was a pile of crap, 2003 was pretty compliant. 2005 has fixed many issues that weren’t in 2003, including the one bani mentioned afaik.
You could nit pick all day long about obscure instances where some specific compiler doesn’t do something right. The only thing that matters is what tools you can be the most productive with.
mingw is more standards compliant and produces better (faster) code, these are the things which matter to me most.
Kamikazee, from what I hear and have read, MS is making an honest effort at being compliant. The C++ compiler in VS2005 is a very big step forward in standards compliance. Anyway, I think we should only discuss compliance as far as being able to compile the ET SDK, any further duscussion is best done amongst the extremely anal folk at the C++ newsgroups, let’s not bring that trash and negativity in here…
Tu further add to DrEvil’s explanation: The MS VS2005 Express Editions are free to download and use for any purpose until 6 Nov 2006. After that, people who want to install a VS2005 Express Edition will have to buy it for USD$49.00 . People who already have downloaded the VS2005 Express Edition before that time can continue using it forever without restriction.
speaking as the person who put the ET 2.60 SDK together I think i’m pretty qualified to comment on the quality of compilers 
mingw helped us discover and fix a number of win32 bugs in ET which VC6/VS2003/VS2005 silently let through. even if your final build target isn’t mingw, it’s still highly valuable to compile your code under mingw and use the tools available in mingw for debugging VC/VS code.
Well, I certainly agree with compiling code under different compilers for checking errors, you never know what bugs will be revealed by a different compiler.
To answer the original question, yes, the VS2005 Express C++ compile can be used to compile ET. This is what I did, in a nutshell:
Download the installer at http://msdn.microsoft.com/vstudio/express/visualc/download/
As indicated in that page, you must download and install the platform SDK after completing the VC installation. (The platform SDK is labeled as Windows Server 2003 Platform SDK, don’t worry, this just means it is the latest version of the SDK, I installed it on a Windows 2000 virtual machine, and there were no problems)
Follow these instructions to install the SDK and configure the VS2005 IDE to use it: http://msdn.microsoft.com/vstudio/express/visualc/usingpsdk/
After doing that stuff, everythign compiled fine for me. VC2005 complains about deprecated Std C Library functions (and asks you to use their secure equivalents), but those warnings can be turned off. Even if they are not, everything compiles just fine.
And, FYI, if you want to compile Quake3, you’ll also need the DirectX SDK.
This should be added to the compiling under windows sticky, its the only topic I could find that actualy helped me compile the source.
