Subject:   MSVC Gripes



  The attached is from Brian Hook, one of the developers of Quake 2 at iD

  software (http://finger.planetquake.com/qfplan.asp?userid=bwh&id=3637).

  (I've started my own list: at http://web/~chrisf/devstudio.html -- not

  that I'm bitter or anything like that)

  October 9, 1997

  ------------------

  I do not comprehend Microsoft's inability to write software that just

  works.

  Here is the latest in my epic saga of "How to Write Software When Your

  Tools are Written By Complete Idiots". The sad part is that I know a lot

  of really competent and smart people at Microsoft, yet I guess their

  code never makes it into production software. Or something like that.

  So why am I griping? Dig upon this scenario:

  Given two identical machines (Intergraph Realizm workstations, identical

  driver sets, both dual PPro/200s and 128MB of RAM, both running WinNT 4

  with SP3), and given two IDENTICAL installations of MSVC 5 (w/ SP2), and

  given that both grab an ENTIRE directory of source code (including all

  relevant project and workspace files) from a central directory, and both

  do complete rebuilds without touching any compiler options, given ALL

  this, WHY IN THE WORLD WOULD THEY GENERATE DIFFERENT EXECUTABLES?

  different sizes, and in many cases different behaviour.

  If I build Quake2 on my machine using the "release build", the DLLs and

  EXEs generated work just fine. If either Cash or Carmack do the same

  thing, they get fucked up, bizarre shit like weird spinning worlds and

  other randomly bizarre stuff.

  Did I mention this is with the same basic hardware on everyone's

  machine? And the same OS? And the same compiler? And the same project

  file? And the same workspace files? Cash went so far as to format his

  hard drive and reinstall everything from scratch, and he's getting the

  same problems. Where are these magic compiler options being stored -- in

  the Flash BIOS?!

  Or maybe I have magic compiler options being stored in my registry...and

  in that case, well, civilization is doomed and we may as well start

  building fires with rocks again.

  It's like the programmers at Microsoft have neither pride nor common

  sense.