§ ¶Fix list for Visual Studio 2005 Service Pack 1
Glenn Maynard writes:
I sure wish I could find a good list of what's actually changed. The "new in SP1" list is empty.
Ah, yes. Microsoft made it really hard to tell what actually got fixed in Visual Studio 2005 Service Pack 1. There are actually some fix lists out, though (and I do mean lists).
The "what's new in SP1" selection referred to by the SP1 release notes is indeed empty -- sloppy. One of the commenters on the VC++ blog found a list of hotfixes that made it into the service pack, though:
http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx/kb/918526
This is not a comprehensive list of fixes, as it only lists hotfixes; other bugs that were submitted on Connect have also been fixed. Some, but not all, of the fixes that were tentatively listed for VC++ SP1 (http://blogs.msdn.com/vcblog/archive/2006/06/22/643325.aspx) made it into the build. For instance, a fix for a for scoping bug that I submitted got backed out -- I'm pretty sure that was in the beta build -- but an obscure alloca() bug was fixed.
If you dig further into the help, you can find a new SP1 section added to the "What's New in Visual C++ Compiler, Language, and Tools" section, listing new features added to the service pack (naughty, naughty).
http://msdn2.microsoft.com/en-us/library/f0tby9k9(VS.80).aspx
The new features are minor. The SP1 page says that it adds "new processor support (e.g. Core Duo) for code generation," but don't get too excited. All of the new VC++ features pertain only to kernel mode -- specifically, intrinsics were added for the new hardware virtualization instructions, and for declaring whether a 32-bit pointer is signed or unsigned. Okay, you could use __ud2() and __nop() in user space, but they're not terribly useful.
Update:
Kevin Frei on the VC++ team posted a little note on his blog about compiler level fixes in SP1:
http://blogs.msdn.com/freik/archive/2006/12/19/new-job-sp1.aspx
It looks like SP1 is worthwhile if you do AMD64 or use profile guided optimization (PGO).
Comments
Comments posted:
So, what you're saying is that the SP is useless?
/Max
Max - 25 12 06 - 07:13
I didn't say that. A Service Pack should ideally only consist of fixes, and for it to have fewer new features is a *good* thing -- fewer things to break.
Now, as for whether the fixes are worthwhile, that I can't say. The hotfix list looks fairly disappointing, but the tentative fix list for VC++ looked pretty good. One unnamed fix that I forgot about is that devenv.com's stdout is no longer buffered again (yay).
Truth be told, when it comes to the compiler and libraries, I thought VS2005 RTM was fine. Given the number of Wont Fix or By Design responses I got from submitting bugs on the IDE, I gave up hope on that getting improved for SP1.
Phaeron - 25 12 06 - 15:19
The 20-second-intellisense problem hasn't been touched, edit and continue still gave "does not support changes to data types" after making a purely whitespace change and forced a build after ending debugging (control-break cancelling ignored), it still closes watch trees completely when they change, and linking my project still takes some thirty seconds in debug builds, even with incremental linking. (I guess "causing premature hair loss" is "by design", and clearly not their problem. Maybe it's preparatory to entering the wig market ...)
Glenn Maynard - 25 12 06 - 23:14
Are you modifying static libs a lot? It's a known problem with the linker in VS.NET 2002 and later that modifying any static lib disables incremental linking. You have to use IncrediBuild with IncrediLink enabled, Fast Solution Build's multi-project incremental link, or the "use library dependency inputs" option in VS2005 to avoid this. All three of these will change link behavior slightly, though.
Phaeron - 26 12 06 - 03:52
The only static libs are unchanging code--unchanging enough to check the built libraries into CVS and not touch them for ages (ie. zlib, jpeg). The timestamps on the libraries look OK.
Glenn Maynard - 26 12 06 - 14:49
First of all I would like to congratulate you about the wonderful job you have done with this piece of software. I own PLEXTOR ConvertX PVR PX-TV402U Video Capture device and I use VirtualDub to capture in DivX format. The results are excellent. I play back the captured videos using a multimedia – hard disk player, where the video quality is excellent. However, the video freezes when I use the fast-forward facility of the multimedia player. During normal play back, there are no problems at all, at least with the latest version of VirtualDub (v.1.6.17). Do you have any suggestions?
Best regards,
P. Drosos, Athens - Greece
P. DROSOS - 28 12 06 - 14:39
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