{"id":6273,"date":"2006-06-29T20:56:00","date_gmt":"2006-06-29T20:56:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/blogs.msdn.microsoft.com\/vcblog\/2006\/06\/29\/visual-c-compiler-plans\/"},"modified":"2019-02-18T18:54:47","modified_gmt":"2019-02-18T18:54:47","slug":"visual-c-compiler-plans","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/devblogs.microsoft.com\/cppblog\/visual-c-compiler-plans\/","title":{"rendered":"Visual C++ Compiler Plans"},"content":{"rendered":"

Hi: my name is Jonathan Caves and I’m a developer on the Visual C++ Compiler Team. I thought I’d take a few moments to let you know about the plans our team has for the next release of Visual C++.<\/p>\n

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After the last release of Visual C++ we took a long, hard look at the compiler source base and decided we needed to take the time to seriously invest in reworking our existing code base – some parts of which are over 20 years old. We have plans to really improve the development process for both our existing native C++ customers as well as our newer C++\/CLI customers. Unfortunately these changes are going to take time to implement and we definitely can’t do anything in the next release (called Orcas) which has a short development cycle.  <\/span><\/p>\n

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So instead of working on the next release of Visual C++ most of the compiler development team will be full steam ahead working on the future generation compiler – we are not yet sure exactly what form this compiler will take but we do know that it will really improve and re-energize the C++ development process.<\/p>\n

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This does bring up the question of what C++ compiler enhancements will be in Orcas?  <\/span>Notice I said “most of the compiler development team” as we are not putting the whole team on the future generation compiler – instead we have left one developer, yours truly, to work on the current source base. We know that C++ is still one of the most widely used programming languages and that we can’t just let the current Visual C++ compiler stagnate so I’ll be working on keeping it ticking.  <\/span>This is mostly going to involve bug fixing (and I hope that most of the bugs I fix will be ones reported by our customers) though I also think that I may find time for a few small features!<\/p>\n

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One thing we did after Whidbey, as part of analyzing our source base, was to categorize the remaining bugs in the database. This analysis showed some areas of the C++ language in which the compiler support was less than what we would have wished it to be.  <\/span>We made an effort to address these areas and in some cases we think we can get this work into the next release of the compiler.  <\/span>One example is the interaction between friend functions and templates.  <\/span>In many other cases, however, the work became so big (like rewriting the code that handles the parsing of qualified-names) that we decided to just move it to the ‘future’ compiler. Going forward I know of other ‘problem’ <\/span>areas in the compiler that I am pretty certain can be addressed without needing major reconstructive surgery.<\/p>\n

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But these small features aside, most of the work on the compiler for the next release is going to bug-fixing and I know from interacting with many of you over the last few years that you’ll be quite happy about this.  <\/span>I’m sure you’ll welcome a compiler that doesn’t introduce a lot of new features and instead focuses on improving the quality of what we have.  <\/span>So if you have a serious bug you feel we need to address you should definitely open an issue on the Product Feedback site <\/a><\/font>but please be aware that I am only one person and so, unfortunately, I won’t be able to fix each and every bug.  <\/span>I can assure you though that as a team we will focus on the bugs we believe have the greatest impact – like compiler crashes (especially without any error message),  <\/span>bad code generation,  <\/span>blocking issues, etc.<\/p>\n

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I would welcome any feedback on this plan so feel free to add your comments below.<\/p>\n

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Jonathan<\/span> C\naves<\/span><\/p>\n

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Visual C++ Compiler Team<\/p>\n

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Hi: my name is Jonathan Caves and I’m a developer on the Visual C++ Compiler Team. I thought I’d take a few moments to let you know about the plans our team has for the next release of Visual C++.   After the last release of Visual C++ we took a long, hard look at the compiler […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":289,"featured_media":35994,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[3],"class_list":["post-6273","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-cplusplus","tag-dev"],"acf":[],"blog_post_summary":"

Hi: my name is Jonathan Caves and I’m a developer on the Visual C++ Compiler Team. I thought I’d take a few moments to let you know about the plans our team has for the next release of Visual C++.   After the last release of Visual C++ we took a long, hard look at the compiler […]<\/p>\n","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/devblogs.microsoft.com\/cppblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6273","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/devblogs.microsoft.com\/cppblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/devblogs.microsoft.com\/cppblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/devblogs.microsoft.com\/cppblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/289"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/devblogs.microsoft.com\/cppblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=6273"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/devblogs.microsoft.com\/cppblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6273\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/devblogs.microsoft.com\/cppblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/35994"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/devblogs.microsoft.com\/cppblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=6273"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/devblogs.microsoft.com\/cppblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=6273"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/devblogs.microsoft.com\/cppblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=6273"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}