Feature Request - Upgrade to VS2015(VC++ 2015)

[amaitland]

Historically we've only supported two version of Visual Studio at any one time, it's currently VS2013 and VS2015 with default builds generated using VS2013, which ties us to VC++ 2013. With the release of VS2017 just recently it's time to consider our roadmap and when we move from VS2013 as our default to VS2015.

The only complication with this is the VC++ version being tired to the VS version. So VS2015 means the new requirement for VC++2015.

I'm not in a quite rush to make this change as VC2017 is very new, would prefer that it stabilise for a bit, so this is something to consider over the next 3-6mths.

The cef.sdk packages would be updated so by default it would only be possible to build using VS2015/17 as they get too large including three debug and release builds of the libcefwrapper

Feedback welcome.

[mountgellert]

+1

[peters]

@amaitland I agree with your reasoning. Would you mind postponing the transition to VS2015 post CefSharp 57 release? A couple of weeks ago we had to manually update the .NET framework and c++ runtime for all our payment kiosks. Even with TeamViewer that was large effort 😊

[amaitland]

Would you mind postponing the transition to VS2015 post CefSharp 57 release?

@peters I was thinking more like version 59 or 61. No plans to update before 57 😄

[peters]

@amaitland Awesome 🍻

[amaitland]

Just for clarity, at this stage we'll look at upgrading to VS2015 after 59 has been branched, so the first release will be 61.

[amaitland]

Just as a note, when adding support for VS2017 editbin is in a different location, See https://gitter.im/cefsharp/CefSharp?at=592af5b00a783b6c0ae28259 for details.

[amaitland]

VC Runtime in MSVC 2017 is binary compatible with 2015

https://blogs.msdn.microsoft.com/vcblog/2017/03/07/binary-compatibility-and-pain-free-upgrade-why-moving-to-visual-studio-2017-is-almost-too-easy/
https://blogs.msdn.microsoft.com/vcblog/2017/03/07/visual-studio-2017-for-c-developers-you-will-love-it/
https://blogs.msdn.microsoft.com/vcblog/2016/02/24/stuck-on-an-older-toolset-version-move-to-visual-studio-2015-without-upgrading-your-toolset/

Looks like VS2017 brings a lot of advancements, including the ability to target VC++2015.3

[DickvdBrink]

https://groups.google.com/a/chromium.org/d/msg/chromium-dev/Y3OEIKkdlu0/TCcT1SvwAwAJ
Maybe slightly oftopic but this might make the effort to switch to VS2015/17 a bit harder as chrome is moving to Clang

[ray007]

Can anybody tell me what's needed to make a compile with VS2015 work?
I tried to compile current CefSharp 57 with Visual Studio 2015 and couldn't make it work.

[japj]

@DickvdBrink I just noticed that VS2017 has (experimental) Clang support, so that might be an option?

[japj]

On a side note, VS2017 is also able to use the VS2015 compiler toolchain (it is an installation option in the VS2017 installer).

[amaitland]

Maybe slightly oftopic but this might make the effort to switch to VS2015/17 a bit harder as chrome is moving to Clang

Far as I know CEF won't be changing build tools for libcef_dll_wrapper, so there's no requirement for clang, at least for now. See http://magpcss.org/ceforum/viewtopic.php?f=10&t=15322&p=35693

On a side note, VS2017 is also able to use the VS2015 compiler toolchain (it is an installation option in the VS2017 installer).

That is a big step forward in VC++ development, anyone interested in this should read the link I posted above.

Removing this from the 61.0.0 milestone as I no longer have plans to implement these changes.