Missing 64-bit compiler and tools

Let’s say you have this VC++ project (or maybe more) targeting a 64-bit platform (x64 or IA64). You have the sources, everything is set. You build the solution and your project is skipped. You try again, maybe do a rebuild. The project is still skipped. You check the solution’s configuration manager, and the project is … Read more

Things I like about native development with C++/CX

Visual Studio 11 brings many new things for native development, including support for new features from C++11 (unfortunately not all), or ability to write Metro apps with C++/CX including modeling the UI with XAML. In this post I will talk a bit about three favorite features that I noticed immediately after trying VS11 from Windows … Read more

C++ Accelerated Massive Parallelism

Microsoft has recently announced at the AMD Fusion Developer Summit the introduction of a new technology called C++ Accelerated Massive Parallelism or shortly C++ AMP that helps C++ developers use the GPU for parallel programming. The new technology will be part of Visual C++, integrated with full support (edit, build, debug, profile) in the next … Read more

Generate Output from T4 at Build Time

Text templates (aka T4) is a great feature in Visual Studio, that proves helpful in many scenarios. I use it for instance in developing Alchemy. However, it has a significant drawback: it does not generate code automatically when you build your solution. To build the files and generate their output you have to manually run … Read more

How to Find the Source of Memory Leaks

When you run your (unmanaged/C++) application in debugger, you see at the end a report of memory leaks (if any are detected). Something like this: Detected memory leaks! Dumping objects -> f:\dd\vctools\vc7libs\ship\atlmfc\src\mfc\strcore.cpp(141) : {381} normal block at 0x001FFC30, 54 bytes long. Data: < x > 0C 00 B9 78 12 00 00 00 12 00 … Read more