msvc_notes.txt

$Id: msvc_notes.txt 94666 2011-10-07 09:52:20Z johnnyw $
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@page msvc Miscellaneous Notes for ACE/TAO and Microsoft Visual C++

Here are just some random information about ACE/TAO with Microsoft Visual
C++.  This is more a collection of ideas right now, so it may not be as
polished as other ACE documentation.

@subsection msvc_configurations Configurations

MSVC workspace and solution files come with several configurations.  The
main two are Debug and Release.  Debug produces libraries and
executables with debugging symbols and doesn't enable inlining.  The
Release configuration enables optimizations and leaves out debugging
symbols.  All projects contain both configurations. If you want to
build static or mfc versions of th elibrary you need to use different
project and solution files. Project files with _Static extension
denote workspaces for building static libraries.

Different configurations produce different libraries and executables.  For
example, Debug versions of dynamic libraries are always named *d.dll (like
aced.dll) and the executables are placed in the current directory.  Release
versions of dynamic libraries are named *.dll (such as ace.dll) and their
executables are usually placed in the Release subdirectory.  Other common
suffixes include *sd.lib for Static Debug and *s.lib for Static Release.

Projects only use the same configuration versions of the libraries.  The Debug
version of an ACE example only uses debug version of ACE library.

@subsection msvc_otheroptions How to Set Other Options

Other compile time options are set or unset via the config.h file.  For
example, to turn on a compile time definition, #define it at the beginning of
config.h.  Unsetting a definition just requires #define ACE_FOO 0 or a #undef
at the end of the file (after including config-win32.h).  Different macros
require different techniques.

@subsection msvc_libraries ACE/TAO Libraries

I don't think we have any documents really giving any info on what libraries
are produced by the MSVC project files.

So unlike the Unix platforms, Win32 libraries do not have a prefix of "lib",
instead it is used as an extension.  For example, the debug version of the
dynamic ace library is aced.lib (which is a stub for aced.dll).  The three
ACE libraries are:

- ace
- ACE_RMCast
- ACE_SSL
- ACE_TMCast

And for TAO we have the main TAO library and several sub libraries which
contain extra features of TAO that aren't always needed (such as the POA
in TAO_PortableServer).

And finally we have the orbsvcs libraries.  Each ORB service is contained
in its own library.  More libraries may be needed to be linked in, since
some services require the use of others (such as TAO_AV requiring
TAO_CosTrading and TAO_CosProperty).

The *.lib and *.dll files are located in ACE_wrappers/lib.  You need
to point your PATH to $ACE_ROOT/lib for running the applications.

I hesitate to put down explicit instructions on what libraries need to be
linked in, considering that the libraries are being split apart more and more
for footprint purposes.  For most ACE stuff, you will only need to link in
ace.lib.  For plain TAO clients TAO.lib is enough.  TAO servers also require
TAO_PortableServer.lib for the POA.  If the TAO application uses Dynamic Anys,
TAO_DynamicAny.lib is also needed.  Then if any of the ORB Services are used,
more libraries are needed.  For example, a client that uses the Name Service
would need to link TAO_CosNaming.lib.

And note that the release versions of the libraries are listed above.  For
debug configurations the libraries would be aced.lib, TAOd.lib, etc.

@subsection msvc_external_projects External ACE/TAO Projects

It is a little difficult for us to list how exactly one should create
projects that use ACE/TAO but are external to the ACE_wrappers tree.  Since
most projects we create are in that tree, we can make assumptions about
directory structure that doesn't always apply for external projects.  In
other words, we have ideas how they should work, but they usually remain
a bit, um, untested. :-)

There are three main dependencies a project would have on ACE/TAO.

- Include paths:  Since all the headers use a subdirectory way of referring
  to include files (such as "ace/OS.h" instead of just "OS.h").  In order
  to make this work either the path to ACE_wrappers (and ACE_wrappers\TAO and
  ACE_wrappers\TAO\orbsvcs, etc.) to the additional include paths of the
  project or in MSVC.  I believe it is a better idea to add them to the global
  MSVC directories.  That way the path to ACE on a machine doesn't get hard
  coded into the project itself (this should make it easier to move the
  project between machines where ACE is installed in different places).

- Libraries and library paths:  Depending on what features are needed,
  different libraries are needed to be linked in.  (This is covered more in
  an above section).  These libraries are specified in the project, but can
  be specified in different ways.  The first is the hard coded way (a full
  path, such as "C:\ACE_wrappers\ace\aced.lib").  The second is listing only
  the library (such as "aced.lib") and then specify the path either in the
  project or via MSVC global settings.  Just like for the include paths, MSVC
  global settings is probably the more robust way of specifying this.

- TAO_IDL: TAO's IDL compiler resides in ACE_wrappers\bin.  If the external
  project contains IDL files, then a custom build configuration can be used
  to automatically call TAO_IDL.  Note that the location of the release
  version of the compiler is in ACE_wrappers\bin\Release (although it doesn't
  matter which version you use, they both produce the same output).  If
  ACE_wrappers\bin is included in the path, then the build command can just
  refer to tao_idl and it can be found via the path.  The other options are
  to refer to tao_idl via an absolute hard coded path or to add
  ACE_wrappers\bin to the MSVC's global executable path settings.  Either
  way the bin directory must be in the path or in the global settings so
  tao_idl can find aced.dll.

So I guess in summary we would recommend adding most of the settings to Visual
C++'s global settings (include paths, library paths, and executable paths)
and just refer to the libraries without any paths.

@subsection msvc_aceroot ACE_ROOT

ACE_ROOT is an interesting environment variable.  Even though it is heavily
used on Unix (in fact, ACE/TAO will not compile without it) it really isn't
needed for MSVC.  The reason for this is that we were interested in making
configuration and setup really easy for Visual C++ on Windows. In retrospect
it might have made quite a few things easier to specify if ACE_ROOT was
required.  One thing you might notice is that TAO_IDL will display a message
if ACE_ROOT isn't set, but it is only a problem if the IDL file includes
<orb.idl> and you don't use -I to specify where orb.idl is.

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