Is VS2013 usable with rocket?

Development Programming & Scripting C++
, ,
1

I just downloaded “VS express 2013 for desktop” and was just wondering if its usable with rocket.

to test I clicked the “new project” button in rocket and selected the “C++ third person project” and then rebuilt the solution using VS2013, the solution still says its a “VS2012 version” and the third person game still works fine, so it looks like it will work with rocket but I am not a coder so I figured it would be easier to just ask.

2

We haven’t tried it yet. You’re possibly the first one to do so. :slight_smile: I added it to our list of things to investigate soon. It looks like only the Preview version of 2013 is out. I’d suggest staying on the 2012 version for now. We’ll make sure to include information in release notes as soon as we’ve confirmed support for Visual Studio 2013 for Windows Desktop.

–Mike

3

well I didn’t even know they were bringing it out until I got an email from them, it is the preview version but the ISO file was 970 MB and the licence I got with it says its pre-release software and lasts for 212 days so I don’t know how much of a preview it is.

anyway I will take your suggestion and stick with VS2012, thanks.

4

Apparently VS2012 express has been removed from Microsoft website. I can only get 2013 now. Ue4 doesn’t seems to recognize VS2013

5

The download link is here. http://www.microsoft.com/en-us/download/details.aspx?id=34673

We are testing Visual Studio 2013 right now. For the time being, you should use Visual Studio 2012.

6

Wow thats pretty ballsy removing 2012 so soon after 2013’s release, I guess its part of their push for windows 8.1.

7

wow thanks. how did you get the link? I clicked everything on MSN it’s all 2013. Even google’s search’s 2012 link is actually 2013.

8

It took me a while. :frowning: I ended up googling “Visual Studio 2012 Express for Windows Desktop download”. The “download” part was key.

–Mike

9

The 2013 version seems to work fine.
It really should work fine, as there wasn’t any really breaking changes, only iterative improvments, to compatibility with C++14 standard and C++11

10

While it’s possible (though not supported) to use the VS 2013 IDE to work with Rocket projects, the Rocket toolchain is hard-wired to use VS 2012 right now.

Even if you build from VS 2013, we will automatically invoke the VS 2012 compiler and linker.

There is a good reason for this: We currently only supply precompiled libraries for VS 2012. The libraries are not compatible with VS 2013. If you you tried to link them against as VS 2013 program, you would receive link errors like:

warning LNK4229: invalid directive '/FAILIFMISMATCH:_MSC_VER=1700'

In the future we may try to support multiple versions of Visual Studio, or we may switch to the latest version in newer releases. It will depend on feedback and other factors.

–Mike

11

I have an question. Wouldn’t it be better to abandon MS tool-chain in favor of other solution ? Like LLVM and Clang. I see at least several advantages, that might not be valuable in short-run but might really prove valuable over long time.
Advnatages like:

  1. LLVM is update to date with C++ updates.
  2. It’s completly Open Source, on very liberal license (I don’t remmeber which one but probably BSD).
  3. You could probably just pack LLVM and Clang along with Unreal, so everyone would be on the same ground in terms of what features can be used in C++. Microsoft compiler is really lagging behind in terms of support. Not not mention you are dependant on tools, you can’t have any control over.
  4. Clang generate more optimized code, and do it faster.
  5. It have very nice debugging messages.
  6. It’s multiplatform. If you ever going to support multiplatform tools, or even just compilation for let’s say iOS, Clang would be good choice, as it is default compiler for Apple software.
  7. LLVM is an complete compiler framework also support other languages like C#. It probably would also beneficial to cut all depedencies over .NET and move them to mono.

The only problem I see for this solution right now, is that LLVM is not well supported inside Visual Studio. LLVM is working on it, and it being it at least usable state shouldn’t be that far off.

Besides, we don’t have to use Visual Studio eh No mistke, I think Visual Studio is best software in Microsoft ever made, but I would really sacrifice it in favor of LLVM, and just use other IDE that have auto-completion and bug display.

It’s just something to consider, but I honestly believe it would benefit everyone in long run to have more stable, open, and often updated build toolchain.

12

Thanks for the suggestions! We are always looking into LLVM and trying to find the best possible experience for Rocket C++ programmers.

At the current moment in time, it is not suitable for Rocket development on Windows platform. We’re keeping an eye on it, but understand it’s not a simple problem.

Beyond the issues with debugging and Visual Studio integration (which may eventually be addressed), there are major problems to overcome with platform-specific headers working properly on Windows. I know that LLVM team and Google are finally working on these issues as of this year, but there is more to be done. We also need to consider how third party libraries will work in this environment. Our modular codebase relies heaviliy on C++ linkage and DLLs which is not standardized as part of the C++ spec. So the Rocket engine libraries, plugins and game code will all need to be compiled the same way – it won’t be easy to mix and match.

–Mike

13

However, when doing right click on file and Generate Visual Studio file. UE4 seems to be saying no compiler detected

14

Can you verify this still occurs after installing Visual Studio 2012 Express for Windows Desktop? Thanks!

15

As with choosing a c++ project template (such as the FPS one in my case). I uninstalled 2013 then installed 2012 and it works now.

16

Thanks for this thread.

MS is a mess when it comes to sorting out the VS SKUs, especially with Windows 8 vs. 8.1 as of late.

There really is no reason to upgrade to VS13 yet, unless you are specifically targeting 8.1 apps. If you’re doing any sort of next gen development, you can’t use Win8.1 anyway, so I’d suggest staying away from 8.1 and VS13 at the moment.