[sword-devel] libsword project files missing papyriplain.cpp?

[Lynn Allan]

> Is there something novel about the VC8 project files that requires
their
> inclusion in SVN (as opposed to allowing the IDE to update the
project
> files to the new format)? More project files mean we have more to
> maintain, something to be avoided if possible. I think the facts
that
> MSVC 8 isn't yet released and isn't yet one of the environments we
> support suggest we ought to hold off on including VC8 files for now.

I can appreciate the difficulty of having lots of files to maintain.
And thanks for the efforts by you, Troy, and others.

My experience is that the vc8 ide conversion over-writes the vc7.x
project files, rather than using a new extension. The .sln and .vcproj
files aren't "forward compatible". It is possible, but not obvious,
how to "go back" to vc7.x

In a sense, vc7.x was "better behaved" because the vc6 .dsw and .dsp
project files were still usable by vc6. This doesn't seem to be the
case when going from vc7.x to vc8.

For now, the vc8 compiler is free (until May, 2006, I believe ... MS
will even pay shipping for the full Visual Studio DVD), which isn't
the case with vc6 and vc7.x. This might expand the number of
developers who could be involved, which seems like a plus.

My impression is that the vc8 compiler is quite a bit more compliant
to C++ standards. It can be set to VERY FUSSY and catch many errors
that slipped by vc6, vc7.x, and (probably?) gnu gcpp.

The MS C++ 2003 Toolkit (free from MS) libsword.mak can be generated
from vc6 (not vc7.x or vc8), IF you have vc6. Again, the availability
of this file might expand the number of developers who could be
involved. It doesn't come with an ide, but my impression is that it
works with WinDbg. It doesn't build MFC and ATL projects, but that
isn't an issue with libsword.

If there were "snapshots" of libsword_[vc6 | vc6d | vc71 |
vc71d]__.lib available to go along with sword-api releases, then this
would be less of an issue.