Re: Update /src/tools/msvc to VC++ 2008

On Fri, Aug 28, 2009 at 18:19, Tom Lane<tgl(at)sss(dot)pgh(dot)pa(dot)us> wrote:
> Dave Huber <DHuber(at)letourneautechnologies(dot)com> writes:
>> I have recently installed MS VC++ 2008 Express Edition for a project
>> that interfaces with PostgreSQL. I really liked that it had tools for
>> creating the solution and projects under VC++. However, the perl
>> scripts create solution and project files for VC++ 2005. This causes
>> the build to fail if you have 2008 installed since the projects need
>> to be updated before they can be built with vcbuild.
>
> Count on Microsoft to arbitrarily break their customers' code :-(

They don't. They provide upgrade tools that will upgrade the format of
the project files automatically for you.

If your project files are developed in the normal way, you run thi
upgrade on them and you're done.

In our case, we re-generate them, so they have to be upgraded every
time. But the tools are still there. I haven't tried it myself, but
IIRC Dave Page did try that at one point, but there were some further
issues. Not sure where that ended.

>>  2.  Can I submit my scripts and have the msvc tools reviewed/updated?
>
> I believe the current Windows binaries are still being built with 2005,
> so unless you can change it in a backwards-compatible fashion, the odds
> of the patch getting rejected are pretty high.  But you can try.  This
> is the wrong list for submitting patches, however --- send to
> pgsql-hackers.

If you can produce a patch that will make it work with *both* 2005 and
2008, that will definitely be accepted. If you provide one that does
only 2008, it won't.

Again, I know Dave P looked into making the scripts smart enough to
generate them in 2005 format and then automatically update it if you
ran on 2008, not sure where it ended. That is one approach.

Another approach is to have the scripts detect which version is in
your environment, and generate files in that version. That really
depends on how big the format difference is. If they're fairly small,
this is perhaps the best way.

I'd much like to see the patch that makes it run on 2008, so we can
discuss which of these two methods will be best. As Tom says, please
do so on the pgsql-hackers mailinglist.

--
Magnus Hagander
Me: http://www.hagander.net/
Work: http://www.redpill-linpro.com/