In order to deploy C++ application built with VS2013 compiler under Windows XP, the "v120_xp" platform toolset has to be set: this make it possible the deployment from XP to 8.1. So next come the question: why this platform toolset is not the only one and the default? The "v120" platform toolset is suitable starting from Windows Vista. Is there any performance drawback? I've tested an application built towards both the platform toolsets under Windows 8 but I've seen no difference in performance (apparently..).
There are quite a few things you just can't do with the XP-dedicated toolset - it makes use of old headers and libraries, and so apps built with it just can't call a lot of newer APIs and use some fancy newer tools. A notable example is DirectX - quoting this MS page:
When building applications that support the legacy Windows XP platform,
you are using a platform header and library set similar to those that
shipped in the Windows 7.1 SDK rather than the Windows 8.x SDK with
the integrated DirectX SDK content (see Where is the DirectX SDK?).
Many of the "DirectX" headers and libraries are included with these
Windows XP compatible platform headers (see DirectX SDKs of a certain
age) such as Direct3D 9, DirectSound, and DirectInput. You will,
however, need to continue to use the legacy DirectX SDK for Windows XP
compatible versions of the D3DCompile API (#43), legacy D3DX9,
XAUDIO2, XINPUT, and PIX for Windows tool (the Visual Studio 2012
Graphics Debugger does not support Direct3D 9 applications).
Windows SDK 7.1A is installed as part of VS 2012 Update 1 for use with
the "v110_xp" Platform Toolset, which contains the headers, libraries,
and a subset of the tools that originally shipped in the Windows SDK
7.1. There are older Direct3D 10 and Direct3D 11 headers as part of this 7.1 era toolset which are outdated compared to the Windows 8.x
SDK versions using the standard "v110" Platform Toolset, particularly
the SDK Debug Layers installed by the Windows 8.0 SDK on Windows 7 and
Windows 8. The Platform Toolset "v110_xp" is therefore not recommended
for developing DirectX 11 applications, but it can technically be done
with some caution. Windows SDK 7.1A does not contain a dxguid.lib so
must either locally define the required GUIDs in your project by using
define INITGUID in one of your .cpp files, or use the legacy DirectX SDK version.
Related
Are binaries built on Windows 7 guaranteed to work on 8/Vista, 10, and 11?
Are binaries built on Windows 10 guaranteed to work on Windows 11?
I've seen some things that make me wonder if Windows 11 is still technically Windows 10 in at least some ways that might ensure apps built on Windows 11 be sure to run on Windows 10?
I'm worried not just about the EXE format but for instance the shared library APIs etc. One can build, I'm sure, on a newer Windows and use a DLL, or a function in a DLL, that doesn't exist on the older Windows.
All versions of Windows support the same "Portable Executable" format for EXEs, but it all comes down to (a) the linker settings in the metadata of the binary, (b) the architecture for the processor, and (c) the APIs it needs to import.
If you build a Win32 classic desktop application using _WIN32_WINNT=0x0601, the WINAPI_FAMILY_DESKTOP API partition (the default), and use a recent version of the VC++ toolset, it will set a linker value of "6.00 operating system version". The resulting binary is compatible with Windows 7 SP1, and depending on exactly what APIs you use it might work on Windows Vista SP2 as well. It will also be forward compatible to Windows 8.x, Windows 10, and Windows 11.
Both x86 and x64 Windows support 32-bit applications, although x64 Windows does not support super-old 16-bit Windows programs that technically work on 32-bit Windows.
There are many application compatibility bugs that can make a program that should technically work on a newer version of Windows fail, but these can be avoided by just testing on newer versions of the OS before shipping.
Officially the modern VC++ toolsets, the Visual C/C++ Runtime, and Windows SDKs do not support Windows Vista, Windows 7 RTM, or Windows 8.0 development.
See Microsoft Docs.
I'm trying to compile a program as 64 bits, it works perfectly with a simple console program but if I use my directX program it says me: error LNK1181: cannot open input file 'd3dx9.lib'. When I compile my directX program as 32 bits it works but in x64 it doesn't. I think visual studio 2013 has a default directory of directx with is x86 but I don't know if I'm right or not. I need to use x64 directX libs. How could I link them? Thanks for read.
VS 2013 comes with the Windows 8.1 SDK, and as of the Windows 8.0 SDK the DirectX SDK is considered deprecated. All versions of D3DX (D3DX9, D3DX10, and D3DX11) are also deprecated and are only available with the legacy DirectX SDK. You can use the legacy DirectX SDK in combination with the Windows 8.x SDK, but it requires the reverse path setup of VS 2010 or earlier. See MSDN and this blog post.
In your case, you probably don't have your project's VC++ Directories properties set up correctly for the x64 configurations:
Executable path:
Win32 configs: $(ExecutablePath);$(DXSDK_DIR)Utilities\bin\x86
x64 configs: $(ExecutablePath);$(DXSDK_DIR)Utilities\bin\x64;$(DXSDK_DIR)Utilities\bin\x86
Include path
Both configs: $(IncludePath);$(DXSDK_DIR)Include
Library path
Win32 configs: $(LibraryPath);$(DXSDK_DIR)Lib\x86
x64 configs: $(LibraryPath);$(DXSDK_DIR)Lib\x64
Note: If you were using the v120_xp Platform Toolset for Windows XP support, you'd actually be using the Windows 7.1A SDK, and would go with the same path order as VS 2010 which is the reverse of the ones shown here--i.e. the DirectX SDK paths would go first, then the standard paths. See this post if you are trying to target Windows XP.
This all said, unless you are specifically targeting Windows XP the recommendation is to (a) use Direct3D 11 instead of legacy Direct3D 9, (b) avoid using the legacy DirectX SDK at all, and (c) avoid using D3DX9/D3DX10/D3DX11.
See also:
Living without D3DX
DirectX SDK Tools Catalog
DirectX SDK Samples Catalog
DirectX SDKs of a certain age
Is there any way to statically link Direct3D so the program doesn't depend on any D3D DLLs? It seems impossible with Direct3D 9 and later (although I would like to be proven wrong), but I can't find any information on older versions. I'm making a small simple game and I really don't want a mandatory installer, but I want to use Direct3D.
No, there was never a time when you could statically link any version of Direct3D into your app. The same is true for OpenGL.
If what you are asking is "How do I create a Direct3D app that doesn't require an installer?", then this is actually quite easy to achieve as long as you give up on trying to support ancient and irrelevant versions of the Windows OS.
The simplest thing to do is target DirectX 11.0. Your system requirements would read:
Windows 8.1, Windows 8.0, Windows 7, Windows Vista Service Pack 2 with KB 971644
See Direct3D 11 Deployment for Game Developers
Use Direct3D 11.0 APIs
Use DirectXMath, DirectX Tool Kit, DirectXTex, and/or DirectXMesh which are all statically linked
If desired, you could use Effects 11 as it is also statically linked.
Avoid all use of D3DX9, D3DX10, and D3DX11
Use XInput 9.1.0; avoid XInput 1.3 (on Windows 8.0+ you could use XInput 1.4)
Avoid use of XAudio2.7 (On Windows 8.0+ you could use XAudio 2.8)
Avoid use of XACT
If you use VS 2010 or later, then you can deploy the required VCREDIST files side-by-side with your application with a simple copy
If you use the Windows 8.x SDK version of D3DCompile, you can deploy it side-by-side with your application with a simple copy.
Audio is the biggest challenge here since XAudio 2.8 is only on Windows 8.0 or later, and XAudio 2.7 requires the DirectSetup redist to deploy. Most audio middleware solutions use WASAPI directly on Windows Vista+, so these are reasonable options. You could use legacy DirectSound8, and the headers for that are at least in the Windows 8.x SDK that comes with VS 2012/VS 2013.
If you need Windows XP support, then require Windows XP Service Pack 3 as the minimum OS. This will include DirectX 9.0c and WIC components as part of the OS.
You'll need to use Direct3D 9 and DirectSound8
Avoid using D3DX9 at all so all HLSL shaders would have to be pre-built offline, and you can't use the Effects (FX9) system or D3DXMath.
If you are using VS 2012/VS 2013, you can target Windows XP using the *_xp Platform Toolset, but remember that that uses the Windows 7.1A SDK and not the Windows 8.x SDK so it has some implications for DirectX development.
Direct3D 9 debugging on Windows 8.0 or later is also a huge pain as there's no developer runtime available for it.
All of this assumes you are using C++. Using .NET is not realistic as the deployment story for .NET is rather complicated. You could in theory use .NET 2.0 if you require Windows Vista+ or later, but it may require enabling a Windows feature on some versions of the OS, and you can't count on any version of .NET to be present on Windows XP. .NET 4.0 is on by default for Windows 8.0+, but support for .NET 3.5 and earlier is off by default. However, all use of DirectX from C# requires additional assemblies which themselves likely have dependencies on the legacy DirectSetup deployment.
I have both Visual Studio 2012 Express for Desktop and for Windows 8, and I wanted to create Direct X applications and games. I know that there is a Windows SDK now, and in VS 2012 exp for win8 the IDE is pre-installed with the SDK (I know that from the new Direct3D project). My question is, if I wanted to develop applications for Windows Desktop (using VS2012exp) does it come Windows SDK or do I need to install Direct X SDK? And how do I know if my graphics card support which version of Direct X? Will any Direct X SDK version work with any Direct X version? As you can see I am a newbie at that stuff and any comment would be helpful. Thanks for your time.
If I wanted to develop applications for Windows
Desktop (using VS2012exp) does it come Windows SDK or do I need to
install Direct X SDK?
Yes, with Windows 8 SDK and Visual Studio 2012 (or Windows 8.1 SDK and Visual Studio 2013 preview) you can develop anything:
DirectX applications (both, Windows Desktop and Windows Store)
for any supported target platform (x86, x64, ARM)
for any reasonably modern Windows operating system (starting from Windows 2000/XP)
using any of API versions: DirectX 9.3, 10.0, 10.1, 11.0, or 11.1
Note:
DirectX 9 API is completely different from 10 and 11, and it is obsolete. Use it only if you targeting Windows versions below Vista.
DirectX 11 is more like an improved version of DirectX 10.
So in most cases, you will want to program for DirectX 11.1.
And no, you don't need to install DirectX SDK. It was deprecated (latest version - june 2010). Do not use it in new code. Use it only if you need to compile some old code which uses D3DX stuff (such as ID3DXEffect, ID3DXFont, ID3DXLine, ID3DXMesh, ID3DXSprite), e.g. samples from books or different SDK samples.
And how do I know if my graphics card support which version of Direct
X?
Well, if we talking about your videocard, you can look at your card vendor's or GPU vendor's site. Or any of informational utilities, such as GPU-Z.
If we talking about end-user hardware, since DirectX 10-11 there are feature levels. So even if you are using latest API (DirectX 11.1 at this moment), you can target old hardware (for example, if you using D3D_FEATURE_LEVEL_9_3, newer features, from D3D_FEATURE_LEVEL_10_0 and higher will be disabled).
Note, that to develop for latest feature level you don't need GPU that supports it. You can run and debug application on WARP device (ivery slow and meant for debugging purposes only, not for end-user release). For example, you can have old DirectX 10 card (Shader model 4.0), but target to DirectX 11 (Shader model 5.0)
Will any Direct X SDK version work with any Direct X version?
Latest DirectX SDK (june 2010) supports DirectX up to 11. No DirectX 11.1 support.
I'm a developer in Visual Studio who works with the DirectX tooling (the DX Diagnostic Tool and on the new project templates). You're asking a few different questions in here, but I'll try my best to answer the ones that I can.
1 - What SDKs are needed for DX application development? This link here as the best information on this. Basically as of the June 2010 DirectX SDK the DX SDK was combined with the Windows development SDK so if you install the most recent Windows SDK you'll have the right stuff for developing the newest DX applications.
http://blogs.msdn.com/b/chuckw/archive/2013/07/01/where-is-the-directx-sdk-2013-edition.aspx
This link also has more indepth info specific to the issue of DX Desktop apps on Windows 8.
http://blogs.msdn.com/b/chuckw/archive/2012/03/23/desktop-games-on-windows-8-consumer-preview.aspx
Note here that you can also install the June 2010 DirectX SDK on your machine, that won't hurt anything, we often install it ourselves as it has some useful sample applications to look at even if they are a bit outdated.
http://www.microsoft.com/en-pk/download/details.aspx?id=6812
2 - How do I know what my graphics card supports? I'm not sure if you mean how do I detect this in my DX application at runtime? Or if you mean how do I just look it up quickly for my specific system. To figure out your own GPU it's usually a pretty quick lookup, just find your device name and punch it in online, most stuff released in the last several years supports DX11 so you should be fine here. If you installed the June 2010 SDK that I mentioned above you can use the capability tool mentioned here:
http://www.danielmoth.com/Blog/What-DX-Level-Does-My-Graphics-Card-Support-Does-It-Go-To-11.aspx
At runtime DX has code to use to check if the running graphics card has the ability to use advanced DX 11 features.
http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/windows/desktop/hh404562(v=vs.85).aspx#check_support_of_new_direct3d_11.1_features_and_formats
http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/windows/desktop/ff476876(v=vs.85).aspx
3 - Will any DirectX SDK work with any DX version? So here you basically always want to be using the latest DX SDK as you could see with the link on feature levels above you can target lower levels of DX while still coding using the most recent SDK. Just use the most recent SDK and target feature level 9 if you wanted to create apps that run on DX 9 cards.
Is it possible to run VB.NET in Linux?
I have written code in VB.NET and compiled it as well using Visual Studio in Windows.
Can the same code be written (and compiled) on Linux as well?
If yes, then which software do I need to install on Linux?
Is the Linux alternative of VB.NET freeware?
You can run Visual Basic, VB.NET, C# code and applications on Linux.
The most popular .NET IDE is Visual Studio (now in version 2019) that runs in Windows and macOS. A good alternative for Linux users is Visual Studio Code (runs on Linux, Windows and Mac).
You can compile and run VB.NET code and applications (part of .NET framework, consider the successor of Visual Basic, with several language differences from Visual Basic 6.0). A subset of .NET is .NET Core that can be installed on
Red Hat Linux,
Ubuntu,
Linux Mint,
Debian,
Fedora,
CentOS,
Oracle Linux
and openSUSE Linux distributions.
Setup details are on https://www.microsoft.com/net/core.
You can also use Mono, a free and open-source project led by Xamarin (a subsidiary of Microsoft) and the .NET Foundation. The project focus is to support an ECMA standard-compliant .NET Framework-compatible set of tools (including a C# compiler and a Common Language Runtime).
Mono can be installed on
Ubuntu,
Debian,
Raspbian (used in Raspberry Pi)
and CentOS Linux distributions.
You can run most Windows applications (created with VB, VB.NET or with other tools) using Wine that supports the Windows API on Linux.
** About Visual Basic (not VB.NET, due to the original question) **
Note that the last version of visual basic is 6.0, released in 1998, declared legacy during 2008 and supported on Windows XP, Windows Vista, Windows Server 2008 including R2, Windows 7, Windows Server 2012, and Windows 8.x. There are also other basic flavors (like QuickBASIC, Gambas or others).
The support end dates for Visual Basic 6.0 are:
The Visual Basic 6.0 IDE [Integrated Development Environment]:
supported ended on April 8, 2008.
Visual Basic 6.0 Runtime the base libraries and execution engine used to run Visual Basic 6.0 applications: support ended on April 8, 2014.
Visual Basic 6.0 Runtime Extended Files: support ended on April 8, 2014.
You could have a look at the Mono VisualBasic.Net support, or maybe go and check out the Gambas project.
You won't find a fully compatible solution.
There are a few, like SimpleBasic, GnomeBasic and XBasic. None of them are fully compatible with Visual Basic.
The above answer was accepted eons ago, but is horribly outdated, since more recently, there's also .NET Core. This will run the actual VB.NET language, but it will not use Windows Forms controls and features powering most real VB.NET applications. .NET Core 3 does support some variation of Windows Forms, but only on Windows.
Please check Pedro Polonia's excellent answer that contains all the details that mine misses.
Mono is a really interesting project. You can run applications on Linux.
Is not fully compatible, but they are working on that.
Take a look in this site Working with Mono
VB on linux is posible using vb2005.
First install wine.
run in the terminal winetricks dotnet20 dotnet40
download the installer and run it
(wine Downloads/yourinstaller.exe)
execute wine WINEPREFIX=~/yourprefix WINEARCH='win32' wine yourprefix/drive_c/Program\ Files/Microsoft\ Visual\ Studio\ 8/Common7/IDE/vbexpress.exe
Gambas Basic is actively developed and works good. Here you can find a small tutorial for programming a calculator:
Gambas Basic 3.14
This is now possible using .NET Core.
Publish .NET apps with the .NET CLI
How to run a .NET Core console application on Linux
The Java countdown is now running :-)
For those looking for an alternative to Visual-Basic and Visual-Studio with cross-platform support, B4J (Basic For Java) is a good choice too. It's free, kind-of\semi "open-sourced" and really user friendly especially for those coming from VS.