Is IDE backward compatible to C++ MFC development?
Can I use VS 2005 to continue development C/C++ code and MFC applications?
I downloaded C++ EE to get a look and feel and all I see is Windows Form which is an entirely new language!?
Whats the scope on C/C++ MFC and also RPC based applications? Are these now considered obselete?
I'm trying to see if its ok to upgrade and continue our development with VS 2005 while we move to new things under the new platform.
Thanks
Hector Santos, CTO
Santronics Software, Inc.
So with the normal editions, upgrade versions, the new IDE, compiler and tools can be use to continue development of my current 6.0 MFC/RPC projects?
Yes. You have ATL/MFC and the Platform SDK header, libs and tools. You have the usual Resource Designer to create Dialogs, Menus, Accelerators and the rest. The Class Wizard as you know it from VC6 has disappeared but it's functionality is still present. RPC is a Platform SDK thing and you can do it even with Express editions if you download and install Platform SDK. And of course you have the C/C++ compiler, linker and other tools needed for building native applications.
The only problems you may have are the changes done to CRT/MFC/ATL libraries. CRT has deprecated a lot of insecure functions like strcpy which is replaced with strcpy_s. You may still use strcpy but you'll get a warning at compile time unless you define _CRT_SECURE_NO_DEPRECATE macro. MFC should be OK, I hand't have serious problems moving projects from VC6 to VC7 and now to VC8. ATL has changed a bit since VC6 but I didn't use it much on VC6 so I cannot say too much here.
Probably the best thing to do is to get the 90 days trial edition of Visual Studio 2005 Professional at http://msdn.microsoft.com/trial/ and test upgrading your projects.
