What are the advantages of VS2008 over VS2005 for C++ development?

Question

We are considering switching from MS Visual Studio 2003 to MS Visual Studio 2005 for our C++ development. I think jumping to 2008 might be better.

In what ways are VS2008 better than VS2005 for C++ development?

Are there any disadvantages of VS2008 over VS2005?

Answer 1

There are very little difference between 2005 and 2008 from native C++ developer point of view. However, if coming from 2003, it makes sense to upgrade directly to 2008 - the conversion process should be almost the same, and you will end up with a slightly better platform. Some new features which are available for 2008 only:

• /MP option for multicore compilation (a huge timesaver if you have a mutlicore computer)
• some improved debugging options for multithreaded applications

There are also some additional downloadable feature packs for 2008 only:

• TR1 libraries
• new MFC

Answer 2

To be honest, as far as pure C++ development goes, I don't think there is much between the two, other than VS2008 is the 'latest' release. I didn't notice any significant changes.

However, the latest release of MFC has been given a new lease of life with the addition of the Feature Pack (giving you an MSOffice 2007 look and feel) which might be worth knowing.

Answer 3

The biggest improvement in 2008 for us was in reliability of Intellisense on large solutions. Our project has several million lines of code and Intellisense was unusable in 2003. In 2008 it is improved and works more often than not.

Answer 4

For me the biggest improvement was simply that VS2008 was quite noticeably snappier.

Answer 5

VS2008 contains loads of bugfixes, and is definitely worth the upgrade IMO. Aside from improvements in the UI and related tools, it is much better at dealing with template classes, which didn't always work so well with the VS2005 compiler unless you were using the most basic syntaxes. There are also many other areas which have been improved, but I can't be bothered to find a MS document at the moment detailing these changes. So trust me when I say that there are many. :)

I'd say unless you have some compelling reason to stick with 2005 (ie, backwards compatibility of your code which doesn't build correctly with VS2008), you should definitely push for an upgrade. You can, fortunately, work with multiple versions of VS on a single workstation. You just need to install them sequentiall; ie, VS2005 first, and then VS2008 afterwards.

Then you could test your codebase under VS2008 and see how painful (if at all) a migration to VS2008 would be.