C++ Team Blog

The latest in C++, Visual Studio, VS Code, and vcpkg from the MSFT C++ team

Hello ARM: Exploring Undefined, Unspecified, and Implementation-defined Behavior in C++

With the introduction of Windows RT for ARM devices, many Windows software developers will be encountering ARM processors for the first time. For the native C++ developer this means the potential for running afoul of undefined, unspecified, or implementation-defined behavior--as defined by the C++ language--that is expressed differently on the...

C++/CX Part 4 of [n]: Static Member Functions

See C++/CX Part 0 of [n]: An Introduction for an introduction to this series and a table of contents with links to each article in the series. In this article, we'll take a look at static member functions and how they are supported by the Windows Runtime. A Windows Runtime reference type (also called a ref class in C++/CX, or a runtime class) ...

C++/CX Part 3 of [n]: Under Construction

See C++/CX Part 0 of [n]: An Introduction for an introduction to this series and a table of contents with links to each article in the series. In this article, we'll take a look at the how runtime classes are constructed. We'll use the following runtime class throughout this article: This type has both a default constructor and a constructor...

C++ Runtime for Windows 8 Store apps

Background If you have shipped software built using Visual C++, you probably have had to think about deploying C++ Runtime DLLs.  If your binaries dynamically link to the C++ Libraries, then your desktop apps probably deploy C++ Runtime using VCRedist, merge modules or by copying C++ Runtime DLLs alongside your own binaries.  ...

C++/CX Part 2 of [n]: Types That Wear Hats

See C++/CX Part 0 of [N]: An Introduction for an introduction to this series. The hat () is one of the most prominent features of C++/CX--it's hard not to notice it when one first sees C++/CX code. So, what exactly is a type? A hat type is a smart pointer type that (1) automatically manages the lifetime of a Windows Runtime object and (2) ...

C++/CX Part 1 of [n]: A Simple Class

See C++/CX Part 0 of [N]: An Introduction for an introduction to this series. In this article we'll consider the basics of C++/CX by looking at a simple Windows Runtime class; we'll skim over some of the details, but don't worry: we'll come back and cover them in future posts. The code in this post is complete, though some namespace ...

C++/CX Part 0 of [n]: An Introduction

Hello; I'm James McNellis, and I've recently joined the Visual C++ team as a libraries developer. My first encounter with the C++/CX language extensions was early last year, while implementing some code generation features for the Visual Studio 2012 XAML designer. I started off by hunting for some example code, and it suffices to say that...