Visual C++ Labs at PDC

One of the things that I did not mention in my previous post was that at PDC we're going to have two extremely interesting labs at PDC.  The "Visual C++ Upgrade Lab" and the "MFC/WinForms Integration Lab".  I'll try to get someone to blog about the MFC/Winforms lab, so I'm just going to focus on the Upgrade Lab.

The Visual C++ Upgrade Lab

You're probably asking yourself, "What is an Upgrade Lab?"  The basic idea is that you bring your VC6/VC2002/VC2003 code into the upgrade lab and the Visual C++ Team will help you upgrade that code so that it compiles and runs with VC2005.  Generally there are few, if any problems, but there are some issues that may trip some people up.  Typically easy to diagnose, but it helps to have people there that can immediately identify and help fix the problem. 

Another thing that we can help with compiling code with the /clr switch.  This allows you to easily add .NET functionality to your application.  We can also show you how to use our latest features such as OpenMP, Profile-Guided Optimization, and Project Property Sheets.

If you have a really large application, it probably doesn't make much sense to bring it all.  By the time you finish compiling it the first time, it's time to go to the hotel for the evening.  Rather what we suggest is to simply bring a subset of your project that has two properties:
1) It's representative of the rest of the code.  By doing this you'll learn about the issues you may hit, so that you can immediately go back to the office after PDC and upgrade the rest of your code.

2) It's executable.  We want to make sure that after we compile it, that it also runs correctly.

We do have limited time and resources, so if you are interested, please feel free to send me an email either to me or to porting@microsoft.com.  Look forward to seeing you at the PDC.