Hi all, I need to compile several c++ projects using the version 6.0 compiler. Is there any way to compile my projects using the visual c++ 2008 express edition compiler. In java, there is a command to specify which version of the compiler to use on commandline, I was hoping that c++ 2008 has such a command as well.
Kind regards.
No. there is no such command in visual studio. If you want to compile with VC6 you'll need to install VC6.
Also, notice that the version of the compiler cl.exe is usually different from the version of visual studio. For instance the compiler which comes with visual studio 2008 (which is version 9 if visual studio) is:
C:\Program Files\Microsoft Visual Studio 9.0\VC>cl
Microsoft (R) 32-bit C/C++ Optimizing Compiler Version 15.00.30729.01 for 80x86
Borland C++ command line compiler is still available or use the Open Watcom's compiler.
The link for the Borland C++ Compiler is here. The link for the Open Watcom Compiler is here.
The compilers are command line driven, the GUI such as VC++ 2008 invokes the compiler via the front ends.
Hope this helps, Best regards, Tom.
Unfortunately VC6 is very different than VC9 (the version of the C/C++ compiler in VS2008), and you're unlikely to be able to build a VC6 project of any significance in VS2008 without at least a bit of work.
Also, VC6 is no longer available even in the MSDN downloads (due to some sort of settlement with Sun about the non-standard JVM that was included in Visual Studio 98 or something). You might be able to dig up a copy somewhere else.
To try to avoid too much confusion about the versions I'm throwing around here, as shoosh indicated, the version displayed by the cl.exe command line compiler is different from the version numbers that commonly get thrown around for MSVC:
Visual Studio 98 == Visual C/C++ 6 == cl.exe version 12.x
Visual Studio 2008 == Visual C/C++ 9 == cl.exe version 15.x