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VisualStudio 2005

VisualStudio 2005 is finally here (yes, I know, months ago). If you are a native C++ programmer (nonmanaged) you may have found hard to find the news incorporated in this version (bloated by the managed improvements). Here, the ones I have found:

• Live source browsing (call graph, callers graph and more, integrated with Visual C++ IntelliSense
• Property Manager. Finally you can share settings between multiple projects
• Profiled-Guided Optimization. An improved Whole Program Optimization allowing thinks like Virtual Call Speculation.
• 64 Bits Support. Now, you can target this platform (Intel EM64T & Itanium and AMD 64)
• Improvements in STL like Debug Iterator Support and Checked Iterators (similar to the ones you have had since ages in STLport)
• Multithreading: OpenMP standard comes to Visual C++. A specification for multithreaded programs using #pragmas
• New Floating Point Model (2003 model is deprecated). Now you have fp:precise, fp:fast and fp:strict. fp:precise is the default
• SafeCRT. Memory and String standard functions get a warning when used. You are recommended to use a new group of functions that are safer. Possibly you will want to disable this warning
• Build multiple projects concurrently (those that are independent) on computers that have more than one CPU. Those are the numbers (1> 2> etc) that you are seeing in the output window
• VCBUILD. A command line tool to build your project for your night builds (concurrency is still supported in this tool)
• CustomBuildRules. You can associate extensions with build tools and register additional options to appear in the property pages. C++ builder is integrated as default using this system
• Switch /Oa to eliminate aliasing have been eliminated. Now the keyword __restrict is used in a similar way to the C99 restrict keyword. If you don’t know what pointer aliasing is, please make you a favor and read this excellent presentation
• Solution Explorer allows you to view files in the disk (Physical view) . You can rename files in the project without having to delete from project, rename and add to project.
• There is a wizard that allows you to create a new project from existing code files (adding all of them automatically to the project)