Which C++ versions are supported by specific Visual Studio versions?

Question

Which Visual Studio Version support C++11, C++14 or C++17?

I assume, that some version do support not all functions, but the question is aimed at the core functions.

Are there any differences between the Community Versions concerning the supported C++ version?

Thanks.

Answer 1

That’s a bit of a tricky question. For GCC/libstdc++ and Clang/libc++ the answer is usually pretty clear along the lines of: “Full support for all C++XX language and library features starting from version X.Y”.

But MSVC even in the very latest version does not have full support for C++11. On the other hand it already has a lot of the features from C++14 and even the upcoming C++17. So the question you’ll have to answer is: Which features do I want/need and from which version are they available? The links from the other question and its comments are a good starting point for this:

• Support For C++11/14/17 Features (Modern C++)
• Visual C++ Team Blog: C++17 Features In Visual Studio 2017 Version 15.3 Preview. There may be new versions of this blog post for newer VS versions as they are released. Look for posts by Stephan T. Lavavej to find the latest one. He is the maintainer of Microsoft’s standard library implementation.

As a rule of thumb I recommend you always go with the very latest version you can get your hands on. And if that’s not possible you probably don’t want to go older than VS 2015.

Microsoft constantly closes more and more of those older holes in their implementation. So probably and hopefully by C++20 or C++23 the situation will be similar to Clang or GCC.

Answer 2

I find that this page should answer your question.

As for the Community Version, it supports the same C++ version as the other versions. The difference is in the tool provided(profiler, static analysis, etc.).