Upgrading a big project to Visual Studio 8.0

[lluismc]

We’re planning to upgrade a Visual C++ 6.0 project with 1500 classes to Visual Studio 8.0

a) Is it worth to upgrade our project from one compiler to the other? Which would be the main advantages to support this decision?

b) Shall we see a clear decrease of speed while editing code and resources, compiling and linking our project with such big number of classes in the Visual Studio comparing to the results in Visual C++ 6.0? Shall we meet any other typical problems due to the upgrade of a big project from one compiler to the other?

c) Should we upgrade our Visual C++ project directly from the Visual Studio 8.0 or should we start a new project in the Visual Studio and then progressively incorporate the old classes into the new project?

d) Should we change our native C++ classes to managed C++ classes while upgrading to Visual Studio to make use of the benefite of a better memory management and of other advanteges, or should we maintain our classes as they’re defined?

Thanks a lot for your help!

[S6k9GNh0]

Visual Studio introduces quite a few bit of tools and developer helpers to get you on your way with debugging, testing, etc. But from what I've heard, the compiler itself isn't so much better as to be needed from large projects. It does have quite a decent reference which some IDE's and Compilers lack.

http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/h8w79z10.aspx

[kbw]

a) Yes. VS2005 has a much more C++ standard compliant compiler. Plus, VC6.0 has bugs that have been fixed (like an errors in std::map).

b) The environment may run slower. It's doing more. Parallel project builds will improve your overall build time, even with a single core.

c) Dunno. There's some Wizard that takes you from 2003 to 2005, but it switches off SEH.

d) No.

[lluismc]

Dear friends:

Thanks a lot for your answers. I still would like to say:

a) We’ve been using Visual C++ 6.0 with our project and it runs perfectly well on Vista. Have you tried Visual C++ 6.0 on Win 7?

b) We made an upgrade of our code 12 years ago from DOS - Watcom C Compiler to Visual C++ 6.0. I realized at that moment that the jump had to be done and the decision was obviously right, but the speed of the complete compiling and linking while we made the change increased a lot. Fortunately hardware always helps you as machines work progressively faster. But in our actual situation, I’m afraid that migrating from Visual C++ 6.0 to Visual Studio 8.0 could imply a hard loss of speed as the VS8 seems to be a too heavy tool to be able to run fast with our project. So I should have a strong reason to migrate from one compiler to the other to assume this risk. Which would eventually be that reason? Any comments?

c) Is there any kind of limit on Visual C++ number of classes in the same project or any other kind of limit that should worry us? Does this limit exist in Visual Studio 8?

d) Is there any other way to reduce time consuming working with a big C++ project?

Thanks a lot!

[kbw]

What kind of app do you have?

[lluismc]

It's a design tool, with a simple but efficient graphical interface and strong calculations requirements. It has been developed with unmanaged C++ code using Visual C++ 6.

[lluismc]

Rebuilding our solution (one single project with 1500 classes) takes about 15 minutes. Is there any compiler or linker option that can reduce this time? The compiler should have an option to avoid extra checking of the code. If you have previously analysed your code with the complete level of testing, it seems very interesting to relax the code revision to achieve a lower time to build the executable. Does this option exist in Visual C++ 6.0? Does it in Visual Studio 2008?

Thanks for any comments or ideas!

[writetonsharma]

yes there is an option in vs 2008 for Fast build vs fast code. it may be in c++ tab. i dont remember but its there. if you want i will tell you on monday.

[lluismc]

Thanks writetonsharma, I'll be very thankful for your explanation!