GCC worth using on Windows to replace MSVC?

66
votes

I currently develop in C++ on Windows, using Visual Studio 2010. After the official announcement of C++11, I have begun to use some of its features that are already available in MSVC. But, as expected, the great majority of the new changes are not supported.

I thought maybe the upcoming version of Visual Studio would add these new features. However, after reading this it looks like very little is going to change.

And so, I'm curious about the feasibility of using GCC on Windows rather than MSVC, as it appears to support the great majority of C++11 already. As far as I can tell, this would mean using MinGW (I haven't seen any other native Windows versions of GCC). But I have questions about whether this would be worth trying:

  • Can it be used as a drop-in replacement for cl.exe, or would it involve a lot of hacks and compatibility issues to get Visual Studio to use a different compiler?
  • The main selling point for Visual Studio, in my opinion, is it's debugger. Is that still usable if you use a different compiler?
  • Since GCC comes from the *nix world, and isn't native to Windows, are there code quality issues with creating native Windows applications, versus using the native MSVC compiler? (If it matters: most of my projects are games.)
  • In other words, will the quality of my compiled exe's suffer from using a non-Windows-native compiler?
8
c++windowsvisual-c++gccc++11
You may find that waiting for Visual Studio 11 may be an option to consider as well. – vcsjones
If you want to use mingw you should consider different ide too – David Heffernan
@vcsjones FWIW, there have been indications that Microsoft will be releasing compiler updates out-of-band with the normal VS release schedule. Of course, this is Microsoft, so only time will tell. – Michael Price
GCC's generated code quality is basically many times better than the MSVC's one. The latter just doesn't know about many optimizations :) – Michael Pankov
While late to this party, I bypassed VS2012 and went straight to VS2013 and it is amazing compared to VS2010. I have only had one issue initializing atomic_bool with bool and there are a couple of bizarre windowing issues you can generally work around. If you care about writing correct C++ then you will want this. – graham.reeds

8 Answers

60
votes

MSVC has the huge advantage of coming with an IDE that has no equals under Windows, including debugger support.

The probably best alternative for MinGW would be Code::Blocks, but there are worlds in between, especially regarding code completion and the debugger.

Also, MSVC lets you use some proprietary Microsoft stuff (MFC, ATL, and possibly others) that MinGW has no support for, and makes using GDI+ and DirectX easier and more straightforward (though it is possible to do both with MinGW).

Cygwin, as mentioned in another post, will have extra dependencies and possible license issues (the dependency is GPL, so your programs must be, too). MinGW does not have any such dependency or issue.

MinGW also compiles significantly slower than MSVC (though precompiled headers help a little).

Despite all that, GCC/MinGW is an entirely reliable quality compiler, which in my opinion outperforms any to date available version of MSVC in terms of quality of generated code.
This is somewhat less pronounced with the most recent versions of MSVC, but still visible. Especially for anything related to SSE, intrinsics, and inline assembly, GCC has been totally anihilating MSVC ever since (though they're slowly catching up).

Standards compliance is a lot better in GCC too, which can be a double-edged sword (because it can mean that some of your code won't compile on the more conforming compiler!), as is C++11 support.

MinGW optionally also supports DW2 exceptions, which are totally incompatible with the "normal" flavour and take more space in the executable, but on the positive side are "practically zero cost" in runtime.

16
votes

I want to add some information because the field may have changed since the question was asked.

The main problem for switching away from MSVC was the lack of a good IDE that flawlessly integrates with MinGW . Visual Studio is a very powerful tool and was the only player on Windows for quite some time. However, Jetbrains released a preview version of their new C++ IDE CLion some days ago.

The main benefit comes when working on cross platform applications. In this case, a GCC based tool chain can make life much easier. Moreover, CLion narrowly integrates with CMake, which is also a big plus compared to Visual Studio. Therefore, in my opinion, it is worth to consider switching to MinGW now.

9
votes

GCC's C++11 support is quite phenomenal (and quite up to par with standards conformance, now that <regex> has been implemented).

If you replace your compiler, you'll need to make sure every dependency can be built with that new compiler. They're not made to be substitutable plugins (although Clang is working on becoming that way).

GCC is a fine compiler, and can produce code that has pretty much the same performance, if not better, than MSVC. It is missing some low-level Windows-specific features though.

Apart from this, to answer your questions:

  1. To get VS to use GCC as a compiler, you'd pretty much need to turn to makefiles or custom build steps all the way. You'd be much better off compiling from the commandline and using CMake or something similar.
  2. You cannot use the VS debugger for GCC code. GCC outputs GDB compatible debug information, and the VS debug format is proprietary, so nothing will change in that area anytime soon.
  3. Code quality is just as good as you'd want it. See above.
  4. No, the quality of your code will actually increase, as GCC will point out several assumed standard extensions MSVC would hide from you. All self-respecting open source projects can be compiled with GCC.
3
votes

I my humble opinion, it's depends how someone started to code in the first place. I've been using g++ and gcc for more than 20 years now but the reason why i keep using gcc is mainly for licensing reasons. Although i like it too when i don't have a bunch of runtime dependencies or dll's to bundle with my stuff since i came from the DOS era, i still like my stuff small and fast. gcc for windows comes with standard win32 libraries and common control but i had to develop my own win32 controls for stuff that might require mcf shit to work properly or just to look nicer.

Although gcc might have strong support over internet, when it comes to win32 stuff, many rely on mcf and vc proprietary stuff so again, one may have to work his own issues around and be creative when difficulty arises.

I think it's all about needs and circumstances. If you are just a hobbyist coders and have the time for researches, creating you own libs and stuff but you want a solid compiler that's around since the late 80's and free, gcc sound perfect for the job.

But in the industry visual studio is a must if you want to be competitive and stay in the race. Many hardware manufacturers would prefer bundling visual studio compatible libraries for they hardware over some opensource gnu stuff.

That's my two cents.

1
votes

It can't be used as a direct swap-out replacement for the microsoft compilers, for a start it has a vastly different set of command line arguments and compiler specific options.

You can make use of MinGW or Cygwin to write software but introduce extra dependencies ( especially in the case of cygwin ).

One not often touted advantage of gcc over cl is that gcc can be used with ccache to drastically speed up rebuilds or distcc to build using several other machines as compiler slaves.

1
votes

Consider the Intel compiler (or "Composer" as they seem to have taken to calling it) as another option. I'm not too sure where its C++11 support is at compared with MS (certainly it has lambdas), but it does integrate very nicely with VisualStudio (e.g different projects within a solution can use the Intel or MS compilers) and there's also been some efforts made to match the MS compiler commandline options.

1
votes

GCC and MSVC use different name mangling conventions for C++. C++ dlls compiled by one compiler can not be used in applications compiled with the other. I believe this is the main reason we don't see more widespread use of gcc in windows.

0
votes

To be honest, C++ should be handled with MS Visual Studio. If you want to make cross-platform or Unix apps, use GCC. GCC works and can be used with any IDE other than Visual Studio. Even Visual Studio Code can use GCC. Code::Blocks, Eclipse IDE for C/C++ developers, CLion, Notepad++ and even the good ol' tool we've always known, Notepad works with GCC. And finally, on a PC with low disk space, installing Visual Studio's "Desktop Development with C++" is something like 5 GB, if it was to be useful. And this is where GCC hits MSVC hard. It has native C support. MSVC can compile C, but only with a lot of fine-tuning. It takes a lot of time and effort to finally be able to compile. The final verdict:

If MSVC works, it hella works! If MSVC doesn't work, it HELLA DON'T WORK.

If GCC installs, it works, and if it doesn't work, it's the IDE's problem.

GCC is for people who don't mind spending 4 hours at the computer making it work properly. MSVC is for those who don't care about C and want it to install without any pokin' around.