Best alternative for Visual C++? VS11 Express can't be used to write desktop apps

Question

Some of you might already know that Microsoft is trying to kill desktop development in favor of Metro style apps. The express editions of the new Visual Studio 11 will only support writing Metro style apps. They also won't give you the new compilers as part of the new Windows SDK. The only way to get the compilers is to buy Visual Studio Professional or higher.

Now it's time to find an alternative (alternative compilers for the Windows platform). Any suggestions?

Some links that are related to this issue: http://visualstudio.uservoice.com/forums/121579-visual-studio/suggestions/2645679-visual-studio-11-express-on-windows-7-and-the-abil

http://blogs.msdn.com/b/visualstudio/archive/2012/05/18/a-look-ahead-at-the-visual-studio-11-product-lineup-and-platform-support.aspx

http://www.microsoft.com/visualstudio/11/en-us/products/express

Answer 1

Don't forget the Netbeans GUI which is also available for windoze. It works great, just install mingw and choose this mingw/bin directory for the compiler tools and mysys/bin/make.exe as the make program

to download

https://netbeans.org/downloads/index.html

they have this plugin for vc++

http://plugins.netbeans.org/plugin/42519/vcc4n-visual-c-compiler-for-netbeans

some install info https://netbeans.org/community/magazine/html/03/c++/

Another IDE that I havent used but looks good is

http://www.codeblocks.org/

Answer 2

1) The Metro and WinRT features are accessible from C++/CX which in turn is built on top of COM, so according to this detailed discussion (SO question on WinRT and C) you can use the latest "Microsoft-only" features with any decent C compiler. Of couse this will require some code generation or just a lot of typing to get the access to basic facilities. I believe there would be a transition period and then the open-source community comes up with some automated solution to consume the WinRT APIs.

2) A quick list of available options right now.

Dev tools: MinGW or Cygwin (GCC toolchain + unix-like tools), Clang maybe, OpenWatcom as a thing from the past

GUI Libraries: FLTK, Qt, wxWidgets, Fox GUI toolkit, librocket (if you are into the OpenGL world)

IDEs: Code::Blocks, Eclipse+CDT, QtCreator

3) There's also a non-C++ way:

1. The FreePascal+Lazarus to allow Delphi-like RAD
2. Mono/SharpDevelop

Both options can use C++ code with some bindings.

4) Conclusions

These are the alternatives which give similar results but not always the similar level of comfort.

Answer 3

Yet another possibility would be Qt Creator, which comes with a full toolset targeting Windows (as well as MacOS, Linux, and Symbian). It is definitely somewhat different from VS, so it takes some getting used to, but overall I'd rate it as pretty decent. Qt (the library) generates somewhat mixed feelings -- some dislike its oddities (E.g., MOC), but quite a few consider it the best designed GUI toolkit available.

Answer 4

Gcc/G++ of course. In my opinion it is superior to VC++. In addition, you can use Eclipse CDT as IDE, it is quite usable at the moment (compared to older versions). I work like that on Windows. In addition, you can also work on Linux or MacOS without having to switch to another tool.