Free Visual Studio vs GCC on Windows

[jshriver]

For those developing on a Windows machine, what do you all recommend as a C/C++ compiler?

This isn't intended to be a flame war, so info is appreciate rather than arguments. I'm wanting to test the waters of Windows and have experience with gcc so I was leaning in that direction. Though the last time I tried gcc for windows (cygwin) it wasn't as intuitive to use; it's been 5+ years so it may have changed. So I found out about the Free Visual Studio you can grab from MS's website. So that might be another route to go. Portability is also an issue, so at least in my case that might be an issue if I go the VS route.

Interested in what you all use and the pro's and con's of each.

-Josh

[Carey]

I haven't used Cygwin, but I have used MingW.

I tend to prefer MingW for the GCC compatability, but that's personal preference.

As far as performance goes...

(I am assuming that Visual Studio C++ Express w/ SDK r2 generates comparable native execution code to Visual Studio 2005 Pro etc.)

In my programs and tests, VC generates faster code for my Pentium-3.

For the Pentium-4, VC generates faster code.

Results are usually 10% ore more in favor of VC++. This is pretty consistant for various programs. And the code was often tweaked to generate better code for GCC rather than MSVC.

I do not know about 64 bit code generation.

I also don't know about the new beta of VS Express 2008. I'm not too fond of Microsoft beta software so I have never downloaded it.


I also don't happen to know how the latest greatest version of GCC performs. As I said, I tend to use MingW and its compiler is a bit behind the times.

Also, be aware that VC++ Express does not have a profiler included. Apparently Microsoft feels their products are so great you don't need one because even the full version doesn't include one. (It does have a profile guided optimization ability. So the core ability is there. It's just that Microsoft doesn't want you to actually see the results. It's a deliberate omisison.)

The profiler is another reason I tended to prefer GCC.

[Aleks Peshkov]

Use both!

I personally code and compile inside Eclipse (using MinGW tools).

1) Eclipse IDE have very handy SVN integration.
2) Visual Studio Express have much better debugger (but slower).

GCC have free profiler and profile-guided optimization, I use them until found some free alternative for Microsoft IDE.

[Carey]

Use both!

Good suggestion.

Last year when I was doing so much chess programming, I used several.

MingW, MSVC, Turbo C++ and occasionally even LCC.

Along with a couple different IDE's.

I set my source up seperately from the project files so I could use which ever compiler or IDE I wanted to.

It also helped me keep things portable.

2) Visual Studio Express have much better debugger (but slower).

That's also a good point. I've never been that fond of GDB or how most IDE's interface with it.