Visual Studio

What works

Wine has reached a state that makes VisualC++ Express 2008 usable (or almost usable) for cross-development (hourray !!), therefore I rate it as 'bronze' (there are still some issues).

What works: Loading an existing solution file, editing files, using auto-completion in the editor, compiling the solution, and running the generated application. The solution file was generated by CMake. The application (http://alice.loria.fr/software/graphite) uses Python, Qt and OpenGL and has custom build rules (it is a rather complicated project, therefore many features of VisualC++ were tested). I installed both Cmake, Python and Qt in the same wineprefix as Visual C++ 2008.

What does not

(1) Creating a new project from scratch.

(2) The debugger does not work.

(3) Sometimes Visual Studio gets stuck while compiling, and needs to be killed and restarted.

(4) Sometimes Visual Studio crashes on exit.

Workarounds

What was not tested

Hardware tested

Graphics:

• GPU:
• Driver:

Additional Comments

To install it, I followed the following protocol: (0) install winbind aptitude install winbind (debian) It is needed by the 'PDB' (Program Data Base) mechanism used by MSVC's compiler. (1) get winetricks from the repository svn checkout http://winetricks.googlecode.com/svn/trunk/src/ (the released winetricks does not manage to replace 'mono' (now shipped with wine) with Microsoft's dotnet3.5 (needed by Visual Studio) (2) install dotnet3.5 sp1 export WINEPREFIX=.local/share/wineprefixes/VS2008sp1 chmod 755 src/winetricks src/winetricks -q dotnet35sp1 Note: this takes ages (time for a cup of coffee !!) (3) Download Visual Studio SP1 CDROM image (see links on the left of this webpage) (4) as root: mount -o loop -t udf VS2008ExpressWithSP1ENUX1504728.iso /mnt (5) as normal user (take care!!): wine /mnt/VCExpress/setup.exe (6) replace $WINEPREFIX/drive_c/windows/system32/msvcp90.dll with the one from http://www.dll-files.com/dllindex/dll-files.shtml?msvcp90 (7) with winecfg, set 'msvcp90.dll' as 'native,builtin' I needed steps (6) and (7) to run the generated application: the 'msvcp90.dll' shipped with wine does not implement all the required functions, and some of them (replaced with C++ streams) are bugged (I will try to submit a bug report later-on...) Both the initial release and the SP1 work (from the CD Images, I did not try the network installer). For the initial release, you will need to install dotnet3.5, and for the SP1, you will need to install dotnet3.5 sp1 (using a winetricks checked out from the SVN).

Make sure you operate on a clean 32-bit WINEPREFIX (~/.wine)!

Prerequisite installation by using 'winetricks' script

Winetricks will take care of all needed installation prerequisites and work around some problems. To install it, follow the instructions in the link.

If you intend to install VS 2008 SP1 you need .NET Framework 3.5 SP1

Winbind component

Make sure you installed 'winbind' component with your distribution package manager.

This is needed for the -Zi option of the compiler, and other mechanisms that handle 'PDB' (Program Data Base) files.

Debian:

Fedora:

Never run wine as root (su, sudo)! Wine doesn't require to be run as root!

You will screw your WINEPREFIX and possibly other things up. If you have run Wine as root you need to:

and then run winecfg to set Wine folder structure back up. If you used winetricks script as root you might also need to:

Again: Just run wine as regular user and all should be fine.

This is Bug 9158. Only happens with online-installer version (not retail from .ISO image). Use the following workaround in console:

This is Bug 21259. 

Workaround: start 'mspdbsrv.exe' manually before visual C++, with an 'infinite' timeout.

You can create a shell script that starts both mspdbsrv.exe and VCEXpress.exe, if mspdbsrv.exe is already running, it will be ignored the second time it is invoked.