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The Joel on Software Discussion Group (CLOSED)

Hi,

I need to buy a laptop this week, but I am afraid that Visual C++ 6 will not run properly on Vista as Microsoft has officially said so. And its ever-so-heard to find a good, non-dell laptop with Windows XP.

Does anyone have first-hand experience with Visual C++ 6 on Vista? Any quirks? Does it even install?


TIA

You can always run it under virtualPC

I've heard that it CAN BE done, but it might not work well.

Hi,

What's wrong with the Dell Laptops? I bought a Dell Inspiron 6400 with Windows XP on it last month and it really is a good machine.

I installed VC++6 on Vista a few months ago.  I didn't do much with it but it worked enough for what I did, viewing and compiling a few existing projects.

Since VS2005 had already been installed first, I wanted to change a few file associations in Windows Explorer, and made some trouble for myself by messing it up somehow.  But I don't think that was Vista's fault.

That temporary Vista installation is long gone now so I can't review any other details of it, sorry.

By the way I saw news of some new IBM laptops today with XP Pro preinstalled.

Thanks for the replies, guys.
The new dells are actually very nice, except , like always, the look ugly.

Anyone have more info on VC6 on Vista?

im sure you have your reasons for requiring VSC++ 6, but if not you can download the latest VSC++ express edition for free from microsoft's website

Note however VC++ 2005 Express Edition doesn't include MFC...

Tim Anderson has this to say about installing VC 6 on Vista http://www.itwriting.com/blog/?p=167 (in summary it works but there are hoops to jump through, and, of course, it's not supported).

Visual Studio 2008 will have MFC (although probably not in any free express edition).  There's a beta version available now; beta 2 is scheduled for release this summer.  Unfortunately, it's a beta and therefore "not for production."

Geez, still using VC6 ?  Time to take a wrench to the codebase.  I'd say even if you do get the compiler working -- and non-trivial development using a VM like virtual PC is probably not a great idea -- it's probably not well-suited for Vista development.

If you're just developing for XP and older versions of windows, you probably won't want to develop on Vista anyway.

SM, if only it were that simple... ;)

Often it's not your decision as to whether you must still support VC6. If you're shipping source code to clients and they want VC6 support then you either provide it or ditch the client... If you have one client who needs VC6 support then you need to support it...

Maintaining multiple project files tends to be a bit of a pain, all later compilers support 'upgrading' from VC6 dsps so it's tempting to stay in VC6 for the main part so that you maintain one set of project files manually and the rest are automatically updated. Of course there are tools which make this easier, but, IMHO, the best thing MS could do to encourage people to move to the new compilers is to support backwards compatibility (ie a tool that can write out old format project files from new format ones). If they did that then the move forward would be painless and it would just happen... I've had all versions of Visual Studio installed and VC6 installed on my dev box and it's only now that I've moved to Vista have I taken the plunge and switched to developing new code in VS2005 and using that as my daily working environment. Everything else will work from generated project files and the older compilers will only be installed on the build and test machines...

When I installed VC++6 on Vista, I deselected all of the stuff for languages other than C++.  Maybe that's why my experience was less bad than a lot of others.

If you're writing straight C++ then VC++ express is MUCH better then VC6....and it's a free download.

If you need all the little GUI/resource editors, etc., then you're probably out of luck. You'll need to upgrade your IDE (or downgrade your OS).