Visual C++ 12 Toolchain w/o Visual Studio

Question

I am trying to build a windows wercker box that can build C++ Visual Studio 2013 (Visual C++ 12) projects.

Traditionally, to have only the toolchain, you would install the Windows SDK. But in the latest version, that is 8.1 they removed the compiler toolchain.

Is there a way to install the compiler toolchain without installing Visual Studio 2013?

I have looked my eyes sore and installing the entire Visual Studio every time every build seems like a bad idea. I contacted the people, to see if they could include the the Visual C++ toolchain in their base Windows box. On the other hand, the philosophy with wercker is, if you don't find the box you need build your own and it works awesome, except that be default base box is Ubuntu Linux. Adding one small tool there is no big deal, but installing the entiery of Visual Studio 2013, just for the compiler?

Answer 1

Yes

Since "recently", there are the Microsoft Visual C++ Build Tools. Note that currently (i.e. last time I checked), you couldn't select any SDK installer options, so I suggest just installing the tools (without any SDK), and then install the SDK with the options you want. This will reduce install time and disk usage for the already huge standalone tools package.

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No (see above for update).

In the age of Visual Studio 2003.net up to Visual Studio 2010, it was possible by installing the relevant Windows SDK (or Platform SDK, for the 2003.net version).

This proved impossible to maintain for Microsoft, because they couldn't decide which one (VS or the SDK) would "own" the toolchain and be responsible for updating it, resulting in the MSVC10 SP1 fiasco for SDK users, in which the Visual Studio Service Pack would remove the SDK compiler. Later on, a fixed update was released, but this was all terribly silly. I promise you, I'm not making this up.

Probably not only for this reason MS decided to strip the Windows SDK of its toolchain, and instead force the user to install a ton of cruft to get at the compiler. Good news is though that the previously 32-bit only VS Express editions, now also contain the 64-bit targetting compiler, so in essence, you can still use the compiler for free, by installing Visual Studio Express For Windows Desktop.

Starting from Visual Studio 2013, the Express version has been superceded by the Community version, which is pretty much the paid-for version (with plugin support), but with some limitations as to its use inside organizations (see the section Q&A on this website). For open source development, this means you get full-fledged Visual Studio for free, which is actually pretty awesome.

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That being said, if you need a lightweight Windows development environment (and you don't need VS specific support for say, .net or some MS-isms in your code), I strongly suggest using MinGW-w64 GCC. It is much better at language support, provides better warnings and errors, and will increase the portability of your code.