Maya recommends one of these depending on which version of Maya it is. But since VS2005 is free, can it be used where VS2008 is recommended? Is it a simple case of setting up the project correctly?
OOPS! What's free is Visual C++ 2005 express edition. Which is what I downloaded. I tried compiling one of the example vcprojects and it failed with a "file not found".
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mr grumpy
[ Editor ]
Probably. Their IDE doesn't start for me either. (Even if it had started I think it's time-limited to 30 days). I haven't had any problems with Maya 2008/2009 plug-ins built with the "Express" CL.EXE and LINK.EXE, but then I've only recently been forced into the festering swamp of Windows development, so I'm not completely confident there won't been any problems down the line.
Download Cygwin (it's the only way to make Windows usable) and write a Makefile. Open the vc-project file in a text editor and rip out the compiler/linker flags. Their version naming scheme is all over the place, VS2008 with VC++2005, who knows, but I'm using this:
% cl.exe /help | grep Version
Microsoft (R) 32-bit C/C++ Optimizing Compiler Version 14.00.50727.42 for 80x86
% link.exe /Link | grep Version
Microsoft (R) Incremental Linker Version 8.00.50727.42
You'll need the Windows v6.0A SDK (headers/libs) as well, downloadable from MS.
That’s cool! – A while back I stopped using XCode and put together a Rakefile (Ruby make) so I could build on Mac and Linux from one file. So what you are saying is we can throw away VC++ too? For a long time I have just not bothered to build for Windows at all.
Cool, I didn’t know about Rake. I’ve tried things like SCons before but always came back to GNU Make. I think we can throw away VisualStudio yeah; I have one (messy) makefile that builds on Linux/Mac/Win. VC++ may just be the marketing name for cl/link, dunno, although I’m not sure what’s “visual” about it. Maybe VisualStudio is what Windows people would use for debugging (?) so perhaps they wouldn’t dump it; doesn’t bother me as I tend to develop on the Mac and use gdb. I’ve no idea if gdb under Cygwin could debug something produced by cl/link, rather than gcc/ld.
OK, now this is all Greek to me. And since I’m not Greek…:( But thanks anyway Mr. Grumpy. I’ll just try and find a tutorial somewhere that steps through the entire process from start to end.
Mr. Grumpy, thanks for the info about Windows v6.0A SDK. I was not able to build any of the devkit examples. I downloaded the latest MS SDK (v7), and it failed. But when I installed the one you recommended, the example files worked. I think I’m dangerous now. Thanks again.