Error compiling Visual Studio C++ project - error with cl.exe

Question

Hi all,

I'm running Visual Studio 2005 Pro, and have been getting the following error recently:

Error 1 Error result -1 returned from 'C:\Program Files\Microsoft Visual Studio 8\VC\bin\cl.exe'.

Reading some of the other posts around here, I've learned that cl.exe is native to VS 2008. I do have an install of 2008 Express (but C# only), and recently I uninstalled VS 2010 Express. Could there be some sort of leftover compatibility issue going on here for me?

edit Ok, let's go with it isn't a compatibility issue. Any thoughts on how to fix the error?

Answer 1

cl.exe is the Microsoft C++ compiler, and has been named the same as far back as at least Visual Studio 6. The fact that it's in the Visual Studio 8 folder tells you too that it's VS2005, because VS2008 is VS9, and VS2010 is VS10.

Answer 2

Possibly although, VS 2008 installed into a "Visual Studio 9.0" directory and Visual Studio into "Visual Studio 10.0". So on balance I wouldn't have thought so.

Answer 3

It turns out that the error is not with Visual Studio, but with the test suite that I'm ultimately working with. It replaces cl.exe and link.exe with its own executables, and moves them to different filenames. Fixing some issues with my test suite made it work again.

I didn't realize this until I ran cl.exe from the VS command line...thanks for the suggestions though!