Microsoft Porting Visual C++ to Linux

Saw this on slashdot

https://linux.slashdot.org/story/17/03/11/0431252/microsoft-continues-porting-visual-c-to-linux

Can someone who has the time please explain how this will effect the users of Linux?

I'm sure Gizmo can explain it in detail for us...

It might affect gaming in Wine a bit because we have to use overrides for Visual C all the time:

• vcrun2005
• vcrun2008
• vbrun6
• vcrun2010
• vcrun2012
• vcrun2013

Then again, since we play Windows games in Wine, it might not make a difference at all. Those games will expect a Windows version of Visual C

So we are still wait and see on this?

Yes, cause apparently they are not done. So strange hearing that Microsoft is paying their developers to port their product to a free Operating System that is competitive.

If anything, developers that make Linux games would be able to use Visual C for their games.

Basically, this is Microsoft recognizing that 'the cloud' is the platform of the future, and AWS is still pretty much kicking everyone's butt. This is hardly surprising, given the fact that Amazon have been offering AWS since 2006 and MS didn't get into the cloud business until 2010. However, MS so far have been competing on price, and that's not really working out for them all that well (it's been suggested that MS are losing around about $600m/year or more on Azure).

So, MS can't really do 'free' for the long term, and they can't compete on features for the simple reason that AWS offers pretty much everything people want, and Amazon keeps adding new stuff every day. So MS need a feature differentiator; a hook to make people look at Azure more closely.

Enter Visual Studio. MS have a VERY large developer community, and Visual Studio is a VERY nice platform for Windows development. However, if you are doing cross-platform development (as most devs nowadays are because, hello 'cloud' and 'mobile'), VS goes out the window as a development tool; devs mostly use Eclipse or something similar for cross-platform. And if you're developing on Eclipse, you can easily develop for Java. And if you are developing for Java, you are probably going to run Java on Linux for the server, because it's easy to maintain, and use MySQL/Maria/PostGRES for the database for the same reason. And all of a sudden, MS are irrelevant.

So, starting back in 2015, MS started building in the capability to target Linux and Mac, as well as embedded devices using ARM CPUs (like most IoT devices and pretty much EVERY smart phone). This allows devs to continue doing at least SOME level of development using VS, and oh yeah, remember Azure? VS now has deep integration with Azure, making it very easy for devs to target Azure (and bonus if you are running Windows Server and using Microsoft SQL Server, of course).

It's a smart play by Microsoft and in the short term at least, the development community will benefit, which means users will also benefit. Long term?

Well, long term, MS have a history, and that history is to screw you until you scream in agony, then slip into the other hole and give it to you some more. I'm very worried about where this will end up.

I don't particularly seen a happy end either.
I'm guessing there will be no benefit for us gamers with Visual Studio in Linux

No, because they aren't porting the libraries to Linux (e.g. MFC, .NET, WinForms). They are just letting you use the tool to write standard C++ code using the standard libraries (plus integration with Azure and MSSQL), and then compile it for the target platform. I'm not even sure how practical it would be to port MFC or WinForms (although MONO has managed to port most of .NET).

Too bad, it would be cool if Linux developers could use Visual C++ for developing games in Linux for Linux

Yeah, what they really NEED to do to make a compelling value proposition is make the libraries cross-platform as well, so that you can really leverage all the capabilities of VC. Who knows, that might even be part of their long-term strategy.