C++ Team Blog

Now announcing: Makefile support in Visual Studio Code!

Julia Reid February 17, 2021 Feb 17, 2021 02/17/21

We are excited to announce a brand-new extension for building and debugging Makefile projects in Visual Studio Code: Makefile Tools (preview)! The extension is in pilot stages, but we’ve curated a list of over 70 popular opensource Makefile projects that work with Makefile Tools. Give it a try and let us know what you think! Installing the ...

Visual Studio Code C++ Extension: Cross-Compilation IntelliSense Configurations

Julia Reid February 9, 2021 Feb 9, 2021 02/9/21

The February 2021 update of the Visual Studio Code C++ extension is now available! This latest release provides support for cross-compilation IntelliSense configurations and over 60 bug fixes! To find out more about all the enhancements, check out our release notes on GitHub. Cross-compilation IntelliSense configurations With this latest ...

Improved OpenMP Support for C++ in Visual Studio

Bran Hagger February 9, 2021 Feb 9, 2021 02/9/21

In Visual Studio 2019 version 16.9 we shipped the first stage in our plan to support newer versions of the OpenMP standard in C++ under the -openmp:llvm flag. This flag currently enables several correctness fixes and the use of unsigned integers in parallel for loops.

Abbreviated Function Templates and Constrained Auto

Sy Brand February 4, 2021 Feb 4, 2021 02/4/21

Declaring function templates in C++ has always been quite verbose. C++20 added a new way of doing so that is more terse and more consistent with lambdas: abbreviated function templates. This short post will show how to use this syntax and how it applies to C++20 concepts. Abbreviated Function Templates C++11 introduced lambdas, which look ...

Playground Games and Turn 10 Studios See 18.2X and 4.95X Link Time Improvements Respectively on Visual Studio 2019

David Li February 2, 2021 Feb 2, 2021 02/2/21

The C++ team at Visual Studio has delivered substantial compile and link time improvements throughout Visual Studio 2019. Playground Games and Turn 10 Studios shares their link time improvement wins.

Seamlessly Accelerate CMake Projects in Visual Studio with Incredibuild

Nick Uhlenhuth January 27, 2021 Jan 27, 2021 01/27/21

Visual Studio 2017 shipped with first-class CMake support. Since then, we’ve continued to improve our CMake support by adding new features based on your feedback. We previously blogged about the built-in Incredibuild support for accelerating and visualizing your vcxproj projects, and many of you asked to get this same level of support for ...

Blizzard Diablo IV debugs Linux core dumps from Visual Studio

Erika January 26, 2021 Jan 26, 2021 01/26/21

Blizzard is using Visual Studio 2019 to debug Linux core dumps on WSL. The following blog post is written by Bill Randolph, a Senior Software Engineer at Blizzard working on the development of Diablo IV. Thanks for your partnership, Bill! Introduction On Diablo IV we develop all our code on Windows and compile for multiple platforms. ...

A Year of Conference Talks from the Microsoft C++ Team

Sy Brand January 25, 2021 Jan 25, 2021 01/25/21

As we learned to adapt to virtual conferences last year we presented more than 20 talks on a wide range of topics. I've collected them all here so you can easily learn about the latest advances in our tooling as well as the cutting edge of C++ features. C++ Europe (February) WSLConf (March) Pure Virtual C++ (April...

Windows ARM64 support for CMake projects in Visual Studio

Erika January 21, 2021 Jan 21, 2021 01/21/21

In Visual Studio 2019 version 16.9 Preview 3 we added support for deploying CMake projects to a remote Windows machine and debugging them with the Visual Studio remote tools. CMake developers targeting ARM64 Windows can now cross-compile (with cl or clang-cl), deploy, and debug their projects directly from Visual Studio. You can download and ...

MSVC Backend Updates in Visual Studio 2019 version 16.9 Preview 3

Helena Gregg January 21, 2021 Jan 21, 2021 01/21/21

In Visual Studio 2019 version 16.9 Preview 3 we have continued to improve the C++ backend with new features, new and improved optimizations, build throughput improvements, and better security. Here is a brief list of improvements for you to review. Do you want to ...