I haven’t owned a copy of Visual Studio since VS 6.0. I’ve kept one version or another of the Express edition installed for those occasions when I needed to view some VS project files, but I haven’t used it for any development. I’ve been using Crimson Editor for most of my C work and everything I do with D. So when Visual D was recently announced, I was eager to try it out, but with VS Express unable to use plugins, I wasn’t willing to fork out the dough for the commercial version. Then I saw a conversation in the D newsgroups that led to a solution. And it works like a charm.
If, like me, you’re on Windows and want to try Visual D (which I highly recommend you do) without purchasing Visual Studio, just follow these steps.
- Download and install the Visual Studio 2008 Shell (integrated mode) Redistributable Package.
- In the directory in which you installed (“C:\VS 2008 Shell Redist” by default) execute “Integrated Mode\vs.xxx.exe” (where xxx represents the language you selected on the download page).
- Download and install Visual D.
- (UPDATE: This step is no longer necessary — Visual D now includes cvs2pdb in the installer) For debugging support, download cv2pdb and extract the archive into the directory where you installed Visual D.
Now you should be ready to roll.
However, the integrated version of the shell takes advantage of any VS tools you already have installed (such as Spy++, the GUID creator, etc…). At the moment I’m not clear if you need to have Visual C++ Express installed for debugging. I assume yes, but I could be wrong. I already had the 2008 Express version installed before I installed the shell, so if anyone without it can confirm if it’s needed I’d love to know.
I’m working on Windows 7 with VS 2008 and i actually tried Visual D yesterday. I first installed the current D compiler, then Visual D, but i couldn’t get it to run. First of all i needed to start VS as administrator, otherwise the compiler just quit (with no error, but doing nothing). But when i started it as an administrator, i could “compile”, BUT all the command-line arguments passed to dmd where created as folders on disk. So, for example dmd was called with “-release -blablub” and then it complained about “already existing folders”, and when i looked into the main folder, there where folder “-release” and “-blablub”.
So i thought “WTF?!” and left it at that, for now (no time to find out what’s wrong).
I am really happy that someone makes a VS integration, and it looks really, really good. I never could get around fiddling more with D, because i hate text-editors and command-lines (actually i’m so much used to VS, i am easily turned off by every alternative).
If anyone has an idea what could have gone wrong, i’m happy for suggestions.
Jan.
You may want to take this over to the Visual D forums and see if Rainer can help you sort it out.
Is this use legal, not conflicting on the license?
I’d like to hear about experiences eith full version of VS2008, won’t Visual D interfere with production environments (.Net, C#)?
The VS Shell Redistributable is intended to be used as a base for tools like Visual D, so that they can be distributed and used without a Visual Studio installation. There are two versions: integrated and isolated. The former integrates with any Visual Studio components already installed, while the latter does not. According to the web site, the shell redistributable is intended to be chained on another installer and not used directly. However, I see nothing in the license that prohibits anyone from downloading the shell themselves and installing a plugin on top of it. The EULA specifically says in section 1a:
And in section 1b:
So if you are a single user installing the shell for use with Visual D, which is a third party program, then you are, according to my interpretation, good to go. But I am not a lawyer.
It shouldn’t, given that it’s a self-contained plugin. But there may be bugs to work out.
Yeah, I looked into this a year or two ago for something completely different, and believe this use is legal — slightly funky, but legal. (The Shell is mostly intended to be redistributed by developers of tools like Visual D — and there can in some cases I think be royalties for that). It would be difficult for Microsoft to get mad at someone for experimenting with the freely-offered Shell if they used it with an equally free D tool (which isn’t even directly competitive with MS).
For now, it should be more than fine; later, Rainer might even be able to bundle/chain the Shell installer with the Visual D installer in case the user doesn’t have VS already. (Personally, I think that’d be a good idea.)
But like Aldacron, I am not a lawyer. I don’t even play one on TV. (I don’t even have a TV.) All this is based on a careful reading of the license agreement and supporting documentation for VS 2008 Shell a year or two ago.
In short: I confirm that the Visual C++ 2008 Express is needed, besides the Studio 2008 Shell redistributable.
More details:
I’m using D1, but I had o download the latest release (1.061) because an older one (1.051) didn’t accept the -map parameter.
After fixing that, I got errors while running the cv2pdb: “cannot add symbols to module”. The solution was to install the Visual C++ Express (2008). Probably some .dlls needed do not come with the VS Shell package.