We posted a new drop of the Visual C++ 2005 compiler for the Visual Studio 2005 Beta and the Visual C++ 2005 Express Beta. The version number is 40904. This update should fix all the problems that the previous tools release had with mismatched libraries because it includes the matched import libs for non-pure managed CRT.
So as before, this is beta code that's outside of our regular beta release, so use it with caution. We would love to get feedback from you about these tools. Please submit bugs and comments through the MSDN Product Feedback Center.
Are there any fixes to the IDE?
It seems to me one of the big improvements is supposed to be the ability to design Windows forms in design view and implement them in C++. But as soon as you enable multilanguage settings and add a design in any language other than Japanese, the IDE is no longer able to open the design view. This is kind of crucial. The first two things done in internationalizing an application are to add English strings and then make sure there's no dependency on Japanese fonts.
I submitted a report to the MSDN Product Feedback Center (which I found a bit late, as you might have noticed). Someone in MS didn't consider this to be a showstopper. This amazes me. Failures in Intellisense cause nuisances but don't prevent coding. But when the IDE can't even open a form any more it seems to me that Visual Studio is kind of useless.
The page mentions that Intellisense hasn't been fixed but doesn't mention the IDE.
I've seen a few reports now (other than just my own) where people have found what seems like legitimate bugs, and someone in MS just closes it. In at least one case, I had another bug report that was similar to, but not identical to the closed one, and a few days later, all of a sudden, the old bug report gets the status: "umm, yeah, we're looking into it".
I sort of wonder if there aren't too many twelve oh clock flashers (all appliances in their house always flashes 12) that are trying to post on the site, and that that overloads the MS employees with reading phoney bug reports. (Read FDBK10547 (Note esp. the length of the comments section) to convince yourself that this is the case).
Visual C++ 2005 Tools Refresh link is broken.
for each is working !!!!
When I downloaded VC++ Beta 1 Express, I tried with the typical populate an array, then iterate over it with for each, but for each didn't work. I was confused as I had expected the VC++ Beta 1 to be feature complete.
Promptly I posted this on the Product Feedback and later was told that this is not available in Beta 1 yet. So when I heard about the Tools Refresh from Herb Sutter's blog, I was sort of expecting 'for each' to be included and its actually included!!!
Although C# is still my preferred language, I'll visit C++ more often now I think, given that is nearer feature completion, language-wise.