Visual Studio 2010 Beta

[Kojack]

Steam is another program stuck on a single drive for NO VALID REASON!
Requiring all steam based games (even ones like fear 2 which I bought the dvd of) to install into the steam directory is really annoying. That really adds up after a while. It's even more annoying when it fills up my system drive (C: in this case) while my other 4 hard drives are plugged in and waiting.

But I found a way around it. Go to www.sysinternals.com (all programmers should be familiar with that site!) and get the Junction command. It lets you add junction points to NTFS file systems. Junctions are the ntfs version of symbolic links. I moved some games out of steam onto another hard drive, then made a junction in the steam directory (well, steamapps or common or whichever one it was, can't remember) which pointed to the real location of the game. Now steam thought everything was in it's directory and all games ran fine.

Anyway... VS2010 has a new beta? I'll grab it tonight and see if it's improved. I'm not getting my hopes up though.
From the comments on the vs blog page, beta 2 is still buggy, crashes, has cleartype locked on for text editor panel, etc.

[nikki]

Just use 'Windows symlinks'?

EDIT: Oh I see you mentioned 'junctions'.

[Klaim]

Last night I had a crash. I was opening compiling closing a lot of projects at the same time. I continued after the crash but that didn't reproduce.

I just noticed that it "seemed" faster to open/close than it's predecessor. It might be just an impression but it seems a bit more responsive. I'll try it more next week.

[_tommo_]

Uhm i downloaded and tried VC 2010, i'm not impressed.

-it is now more pedantic about macros and paths, so bin\\debug\my.dll results in a "file not found" error;
-i don't like the new "blue with dots" interface that looks way older than the one in VC 2008 and steals more screen space;
-Compile generates a lot of errors and is much heavier on the system due to multicore support, i can do nothing while it runs. Also i needed to give it 111 mb of heap because it would not compile otherwise;
-I don't really hate ClearType but without it is better;
-It is generally slower and every single action comes with a delay, that sluggish delay that i thought to have killed with Windows 7.

So while i thought I would like it at the first impression, i'm enough un-impressed. It is not a bad IDE, it's just that VC2008 was better nearly in everything in the 1-2 hours that i used it.

[Klaim]

Can you tell me your configuration, for comparison?

I used my dayjob computer (an Intel QuadCore(not sure witch one)/Win7/3Go ) for test and now will try it on my home computer (Athlon X2 4200+/2Go/WinXp-Sp3). I suspect it to be more responsive on the QuadCore but I'll have to check.


About the error log, I don't see a big the difference other than the compilation performance logs that are added at the end of each compilation. You can turn it off easily. But maybe you're talking about something else? I compiled (but not linked yet) Ogre fine so far. Got only warnings about pointers used as iterator, you can ignore them.

[reptor]

I don't get the clear type hate. If we had monitors with insane pixel densities where fonts could be rendered at 300 DPI and look small then get rid of it, but for now leave it on.

Consider that some people use Cathod-Ray-Tubes and some other people use Liquid-Crystal-Displays. I think the ClearType is intended to be used with the LCDs.

Certainly the source code editor looks worse on my Visual C++ 2010 Express than it does on my Visual C++ 2008 Express. I have a 19" Samsung SyncMaster 957p, which is a very good CRT monitor. Microsoft enabling ClearType is not helping because it makes it looks worse. You don't need to get the hate because this is not hate, it's a statement of a fact that it looks worse.


So, now, someone please tell me how to disable it on Windows XP. I already saw one instruction which pointed me to change an option which does not exist where the article claims it to be... I guess that was for Vista only and the author thought it's the same on XP. The search continues...

[jacmoe]

Uhm i downloaded and tried VC 2010, i'm not impressed.

It's funny.
Because my impression is quite the opposite, actually:
Much faster initial intelli-parse of the solution/projects.
Intelli-sense actually works.
Without even configuring it, it's able to figure out Ogre and Qt and every single dependency I've got.
The code editor is much, much better - they chose a very readable fixed font.
VC9 actually looks muddy in comparison.

As soon a Qt carries a precompiled library pack for VC10, I am kissing VC9 good-bye.

[Kojack]

If you don't like the 2010 font rendering, don't forget to change the font. The default (Consolas) is part of the Cleartype Font Collection, it will use cleartype regardless of your settings.
Apart from that, visual studio 2010 uses whatever the current OS's WPF text rendering mode is.

I'm definitely liking actual coding on 2010 more than 2008.
Although I can't do much of that because work is still all 2008 and I want my stuff to be compatible.

[reptor]

Yeah. Thanks. I just changed the font in Visual C++ and that did it.