Free Version of Visual Studio Professional 2013!

[Steve Maughan]

Microsoft has created a "Community Edition" of Visual Studio.

I'm downloading it now. According to the blurb it seems to be the full professional edition of VS 2013. If this is the case then this is great news for engine developer as the license allows for individuals and small companies (< $1 m turnover).

Let's hope it has all of the goodies such as Profiler-Guided-Optimization and of course a 64 bit compiler.

You can download it here:

http://www.visualstudio.com/products/vi ... mmunity-vs

Steve

[tttony]

Well that's because Microsoft has decided to Open Source the .NET core, here the GitHub --> https://github.com/dotnet

And here the news --> http://arstechnica.com/information-tech ... -and-os-x/

[Henk]

Can you also use it if you don't want to create open source ?

I am using Visual Studio Express 2012 for web and 2013 for desktop but I don't have any profiler. For chess program development that is terrible for you have to guess what's causing the performance bottleneck.

[Patrice Duhamel]

I'm still using Visual Studio 2010 Express, but only the compiler with CMake, and Notepad++ as editor.

In the Express version, Profile Guided Optimization was not available.

[jdart]

It appears this does include code profiling and PGO (since its feature set parallels the Professional Edition):

http://www.visualstudio.com/products/co ... roducts-vs

--Jon

[Steve Maughan]

Yes - it contains everything from VS 2013 Professional. I migrated Maverick over and managed to get a +10% speed improvement using the PGO.

This is excellent news for chess programmers!

Steve

[Robert Pope]

Yes - it contains everything from VS 2013 Professional. I migrated Maverick over and managed to get a +10% speed improvement using the PGO.

This is excellent news for chess programmers!

Steve

So, I can get this, or VS 2013 Professional free from Dreamspark. If you are an individual and not a company, is there anything to differentiate which one is better to get?

[Ron Murawski]

Microsoft has created a "Community Edition" of Visual Studio.

I'm downloading it now. According to the blurb it seems to be the full professional edition of VS 2013. If this is the case then this is great news for engine developer as the license allows for individuals and small companies (< $1 m turnover).

Let's hope it has all of the goodies such as Profiler-Guided-Optimization and of course a 64 bit compiler.

You can download it here:

http://www.visualstudio.com/products/vi ... mmunity-vs

Steve

What's more exciting for me is Visual Studio 2015. The 2015 version will run on Windows, Linux and Mac. It will support all host platforms plus Android and iOS through the use of the newly-announced cross-platform .NET mentioned elsewhere in this thread.

I'm no lover of Microsoft, but I prefer open-source .NET with a MIT license compared to Oracle-owned Java. Also, I know that Microsoft is actively developing a .NET native compiler, but I have no information if it will be made cross-platform or open-sourced. Microsoft claims that compiled .NET code written in C# runs at the speed of C++.

Microsoft Visual Studio Ultimate 2015 Preview
http://www.microsoft.com/en-us/download ... x?id=44934
It only runs on Windows now, but promises have been made.

Ron

[cdani]

Yes - it contains everything from VS 2013 Professional. I migrated Maverick over and managed to get a +10% speed improvement using the PGO.

This is excellent news for chess programmers!

Steve

Nice!
I did not know about this PGO. Also Andscacs has won a little less than 10% speed thanks to this.
Thanks!

[jdart]

I am not getting much gain from PGO, myself. And IMO gcc is pretty much as good as MSVC. But your mileage may vary.

--Jon