Finding version of Microsoft C++ compiler from command-line (for makefiles)

Question

I must be missing something really obvious, but for some reason, the command-line version of the Microsoft C++ compiler (cl.exe) does not seem to support reporting just its version when run. We need this to write makefiles that check the compiler version a user of our tool has installed (they get makefiles with code they are to compile themselves locally, so we have no control over their compiler version).

In gcc, you just give the option -v or --version to get a nice version string printed.

In cl.exe, you get an error for -v.

I have read the MSDN docs and compiler online help, and I cannot find the switch to just print the compiler version. Annoyingly, you always get the version when the compiler starts... but you seem not to be able to start the compiler just to get the version out of it.

http://stackoverflow.com/questions/801279/finding-compiler-vendor-version-using-qmake seemed similar, but only deals with the simple case of gcc.

I am trying this with VC++ Express 2005, if that matters. I hoped it would not, as detecting the compiler version is best done in a compiler-version-independent way :)

Update, after replies:

• Running cl.exe without any arguments prints its version and some help text.
• This looks like the most portable way to get at the version, across vc versions.
• You then have to parse a multi-line output, but that is not too difficult.
• We did this in the end, and it works.

Answer 1

Try:

cl /v

Actually, any time I give cl an argument, it prints out the version number on the first line.

You could just feed it a garbage argument and then parse the first line of the output, which contains the verison number.

Answer 2

Are you sure you can't just run cl.exe without any input for it to report its version?

I've just tested running cl.exe in the command prompt for VS 2008, 2005, and .NET 2003 and they all reported its version.

For 2008:

d:\Program Files\Microsoft Visual Studio 9.0\VC>cl

Microsoft (R) 32-bit C/C++ Optimizing Compiler Version 15.00.30729.01 for 80x86

For 2005:

C:\Program Files\Microsoft Visual Studio 8\VC>cl

Microsoft (R) 32-bit C/C++ Optimizing Compiler Version 14.00.50727.762 for 80x86

For .NET 2003:

Microsoft (R) 32-bit C/C++ Optimizing Compiler Version 13.10.6030 for 80x86

Answer 3

Just run it without options.

P:\>cl.exe
Microsoft (R) 32-bit C/C++ Optimizing Compiler Version 12.00.8168 for 80x86
Copyright (C) Microsoft Corp 1984-1998. All rights reserved.

usage: cl [ option... ] filename... [ /link linkoption... ]