Comments on: VS 2005 - Inferior to VS 2003? http://www.philsteinmeyer.com/114/visual-studio-2005/ Phil Steinmeyer's rumblings on the game biz, programming, and life Sun, 07 Sep 2008 17:34:16 +0000 http://wordpress.org/?v=2.5.1 By: Joe Ludwig http://www.philsteinmeyer.com/114/visual-studio-2005/#comment-1965 Joe Ludwig Sat, 24 Jun 2006 00:24:24 +0000 http://www.philsteinmeyer.com/114/visual-studio-2005/#comment-1965 We switched over from 2k2 to 2k5 back around the first of the year. For PotBS (including servers and tools) it didn't make any significant difference in full build build time. It cut the incremental build time substantially by getting rid of the 1-2 second think that the IDE had to do on each of the 35 projects in the solution. Sadly our build times are still around half an hour. Edit and Continue seems to work better than it did in 2K2. The hang on exit that we used to get 100% of the time in 2K2 is gone. Source control integration is better in 2K5. I haven't looked at the code size since our multiple gig of data make anything they might have done there largely irrelevant. You can control the number of processes it tries to build at one time in Tools->Options, Projects and Solutions->Build and Run. It seems to work pretty well to have it set to 3 on my dual proc machine. Porting to it wasn't a huge deal, you just have to add several defines to the projects to get rid of deprecation warnings (though eventually it would be better to actually move away from the deprecated stuff.) The new C runtime DLLs are kind of a pain. You have to put a folder in with your EXE instead of just the DLLs. As long as you do that (and get your middleware providers to upgrade so they're using the same version of the runtime) it seems to work ok. The biggest thing that drives me crazy about it is intellisense. It used to work once in a while, but now it doesn't seem to work at all. And while it's doing its "background" thinking devenv.exe takes up an entire CPU. Windows deals poorly with one app taking an entire CPU, so it often pauses for 0.5 to 1 second at random. All in all, I don't think it was worth the upgrade. We switched over from 2k2 to 2k5 back around the first of the year. For PotBS (including servers and tools) it didn’t make any significant difference in full build build time. It cut the incremental build time substantially by getting rid of the 1-2 second think that the IDE had to do on each of the 35 projects in the solution. Sadly our build times are still around half an hour.

Edit and Continue seems to work better than it did in 2K2. The hang on exit that we used to get 100% of the time in 2K2 is gone. Source control integration is better in 2K5. I haven’t looked at the code size since our multiple gig of data make anything they might have done there largely irrelevant.

You can control the number of processes it tries to build at one time in Tools->Options, Projects and Solutions->Build and Run. It seems to work pretty well to have it set to 3 on my dual proc machine.

Porting to it wasn’t a huge deal, you just have to add several defines to the projects to get rid of deprecation warnings (though eventually it would be better to actually move away from the deprecated stuff.) The new C runtime DLLs are kind of a pain. You have to put a folder in with your EXE instead of just the DLLs. As long as you do that (and get your middleware providers to upgrade so they’re using the same version of the runtime) it seems to work ok.

The biggest thing that drives me crazy about it is intellisense. It used to work once in a while, but now it doesn’t seem to work at all. And while it’s doing its “background” thinking devenv.exe takes up an entire CPU. Windows deals poorly with one app taking an entire CPU, so it often pauses for 0.5 to 1 second at random.

All in all, I don’t think it was worth the upgrade.

]]> By: Phil Steinmeyer http://www.philsteinmeyer.com/114/visual-studio-2005/#comment-1948 Phil Steinmeyer Fri, 23 Jun 2006 14:42:46 +0000 http://www.philsteinmeyer.com/114/visual-studio-2005/#comment-1948 gdmike - If that linked article is correct, it would be quite annoying. i.e. You might need to install MSVCR80.DLL into proper directory within \Windows\System, rather than just dropping it in your game directory. In turn, doing this properly might require you to use the MS Installer instead of Inno Setup, which I currently use. This might cascade into more dependencies and oddness. The fallback is to link everything statically. The problem for gamemakers like me, using open source, is licensing issues. I use SDL and SDL_Mixer, which, per license, MUST be DLLs. I can compile them with static links to the C-Run time, and I might end up doing that, but at least with VS Net 2003, it was a bit more efficient to link everything dynamically (i.e. the combined size of all needed binaries and DLLs was smaller with dynamic linking). gdmike - If that linked article is correct, it would be quite annoying. i.e. You might need to install MSVCR80.DLL into proper directory within \Windows\System, rather than just dropping it in your game directory. In turn, doing this properly might require you to use the MS Installer instead of Inno Setup, which I currently use. This might cascade into more dependencies and oddness.

The fallback is to link everything statically. The problem for gamemakers like me, using open source, is licensing issues. I use SDL and SDL_Mixer, which, per license, MUST be DLLs. I can compile them with static links to the C-Run time, and I might end up doing that, but at least with VS Net 2003, it was a bit more efficient to link everything dynamically (i.e. the combined size of all needed binaries and DLLs was smaller with dynamic linking).

]]> By: Slayerizer http://www.philsteinmeyer.com/114/visual-studio-2005/#comment-1947 Slayerizer Fri, 23 Jun 2006 14:21:28 +0000 http://www.philsteinmeyer.com/114/visual-studio-2005/#comment-1947 The compile time increased with VS2005, but on the other hand, they added more stuff to analyze and optimize your code. I just wished that intellisense for C++ was as good as the one for C#. The compile time increased with VS2005, but on the other hand, they added more stuff to analyze and optimize your code. I just wished that intellisense for C++ was as good as the one for C#.

]]> By: Slayerizer http://www.philsteinmeyer.com/114/visual-studio-2005/#comment-1946 Slayerizer Fri, 23 Jun 2006 14:17:48 +0000 http://www.philsteinmeyer.com/114/visual-studio-2005/#comment-1946 you can cut the size of your EXE a little bit by going into your project's properties, CONFIGURATION PROPERTIES, LINKER, OPTIMIZATION, OPTIMIZE FOR WINDOWS 98 -> set to false I also use UPX to compress my exe. http://upx.sf.net you can cut the size of your EXE a little bit by going into your project’s properties, CONFIGURATION PROPERTIES, LINKER, OPTIMIZATION, OPTIMIZE FOR WINDOWS 98 -> set to false

I also use UPX to compress my exe.
http://upx.sf.net

]]> By: gdmike http://www.philsteinmeyer.com/114/visual-studio-2005/#comment-1931 gdmike Fri, 23 Jun 2006 05:51:16 +0000 http://www.philsteinmeyer.com/114/visual-studio-2005/#comment-1931 Regarding VC++ & .NET 2.0, IIRC it has to do with the visual studio runtime DLL. It is actually an assembly now. You can no longer just drop the runtime DLL in the app directory. To avoid the .NET requirement, you have to jump through hoops and bundle the runtime as a Merge Module. Steve Streeting wrote a couple of blog posts about this some time ago: http://www.stevestreeting.com/?p=181 http://www.stevestreeting.com/?p=183 There was also an MSDN article about it, but I can't find the link right now. As far as I know this applies to all editions of VC 2005 and not just Express. Regarding VC++ & .NET 2.0, IIRC it has to do with the visual studio runtime DLL. It is actually an assembly now. You can no longer just drop the runtime DLL in the app directory. To avoid the .NET requirement, you have to jump through hoops and bundle the runtime as a Merge Module.

Steve Streeting wrote a couple of blog posts about this some time ago:

http://www.stevestreeting.com/?p=181
http://www.stevestreeting.com/?p=183

There was also an MSDN article about it, but I can’t find the link right now. As far as I know this applies to all editions of VC 2005 and not just Express.

]]> By: Phil Steinmeyer http://www.philsteinmeyer.com/114/visual-studio-2005/#comment-1915 Phil Steinmeyer Thu, 22 Jun 2006 23:10:45 +0000 http://www.philsteinmeyer.com/114/visual-studio-2005/#comment-1915 Haven't touched it. Haven’t touched it.

]]> By: Colm http://www.philsteinmeyer.com/114/visual-studio-2005/#comment-1913 Colm Thu, 22 Jun 2006 22:42:23 +0000 http://www.philsteinmeyer.com/114/visual-studio-2005/#comment-1913 Have you had a change to mess with the profile guilded optimizer yet? Did it have any major effect if you did? Have you had a change to mess with the profile guilded optimizer yet?

Did it have any major effect if you did?

]]> By: Phil Steinmeyer http://www.philsteinmeyer.com/114/visual-studio-2005/#comment-1903 Phil Steinmeyer Thu, 22 Jun 2006 18:47:10 +0000 http://www.philsteinmeyer.com/114/visual-studio-2005/#comment-1903 No - that's not true if you're using native code. Probably true if you're using C#, Visual Basic, or Java#, but I don't know the details on those languages (I don't use them...) No - that’s not true if you’re using native code. Probably true if you’re using C#, Visual Basic, or Java#, but I don’t know the details on those languages (I don’t use them…)

]]> By: Drew http://www.philsteinmeyer.com/114/visual-studio-2005/#comment-1902 Drew Thu, 22 Jun 2006 18:32:37 +0000 http://www.philsteinmeyer.com/114/visual-studio-2005/#comment-1902 I understand that by using VS 2005, users will be required to install the .NET 2.0 redistributable before they can use your program. How do this affect your game plan? Is it a consideration? Drew I understand that by using VS 2005, users will be required to install the .NET 2.0 redistributable before they can use your program.

How do this affect your game plan?

Is it a consideration?

Drew

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