Visual C++ 2008 Feature Pack Release

Brief Description

Visual C++ 2008 Libraries Extension Feature Pack Refresh

Overview

The Visual C++ 2008 Feature Pack extends the VC++ Libraries shipped with Visual Studio 2008 and is fully covered under Microsoft's standard support policies.

The VC++ 2008 MFC libraries have been extended to support creation of applications that have:

Office Ribbon style interface
Office 2007, Office 2003 and Office XP look and feel
Modern Visual Studio-style docking toolbars and panes
Fully customizable toolbars and menus
A rich set of advanced GUI controls
Advanced MDI tabs and groups
And much more!

This feature pack also includes an implementation of TR1. Portions of TR1 are scheduled for adoption in the upcoming C++0x standard as the first major addition to the ISO 2003 standard C++ library. Our implementation includes a number of important features such as:

Smart pointers
Regular expression parsing
New containers (tuple, array, unordered set, etc)
Sophisticated random number generators
Polymorphic function wrappers
Type traits
And more!

Note: This feature pack does not include C99 compatibility or support for special math functions.

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System Requirements

Supported Operating Systems: Windows Server 2003; Windows Vista; Windows XP

Visual Studio: This Feature Pack is only supported on systems which have the English language (ENU) version of Visual Studio 2008 Standard Edition or above installed.
- Support for systems with non-English versions of Visual Studio 2008 installed will be available in Visual Studio 2008 Service Pack 1.
Microsoft Windows SDK: If you install the Visual C++ 2008 Feature Pack and then install the Windows SDK for Windows Server 2008 and .NET Framework 3.5, some of the files in the Feature Pack are overwritten and lose the additions made by the Feature Pack.

Resolution:
- Please install the Windows SDK for Windows Server 2008 and .NET Framework 3.5 first and then the Feature Pack.
- If you have already installed the Feature Pack first and then Windows SDK, repairing your VS 2008 installation should solve the problem.

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Instructions

This is a supplemental library and requires Visual Studio 2008 Standard Edition or above be installed on your system. Installation on systems with Visual Studio 2008 Service Pack 1 (BETA) is not supported.

Click the Download button on this page to start the download.

MSDN online Libraries

The MSDN online libraries have been updated with new documentation and walkthroughs that support the new MFC and TR1 features included in this release. The documentation provides some great content to get you up and running quickly with the new components. The documentation can be found at:

MFC http://msdn2.microsoft.com/en-us/library/bb982354.aspx
TR1 http://msdn2.microsoft.com/en-us/library/bb982198.aspx

Office Fluent UI Licensing:

The MFC C++ library source code for the Microsoft Office Fluent User Interface (the Fluent UI) is provided only as referential material to supplement the Microsoft Foundation Classes Reference and related electronic documentation provided with the MFC C++ library software. License terms to copy, use or distribute the Fluent UI are available separately. To learn more about our Fluent UI licensing program, visit http://msdn.microsoft.com/officeui.

The Ribbon functionality and MS Office 2007 Visual Styles included in this Feature Pack are subject to the license.

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Additional Information

Important information for this release!

If you installed the original version of the Feature Pack (binary version = 9.0.30304.0), we strongly recommend you uninstall that version and install this new update.

To uninstall the previous version:

Vista and Windows Server 2008: Control Panel -> Programs and Features, click on "View Installed Updates" in the "Tasks" panel at left.
Windows XP: Control Panel -> Add or Remove Programs, check the “Show Updates” checkbox at the top of the page.

Expand the group for your Microsoft Visual Studio 2008 installation to show all updates.
- Uninstall the design time components
  Uninstall Update Roll Up for Microsoft Visual Studio 2008–ENU (KB945273) and Update Roll Up for Microsoft Visual Studio 2008–ENU (KB947886).
  
  Note: You may have only one update (KB945273) to uninstall if you do not have 64-bit VC components installed on your computer.
- Uninstall the runtime components
  Under the group “Visual C++ 9.0” (expand group if needed), uninstall “Visual C++ 2008 Feature Pack - x86 - v9.0.30304.00” and “Visual C++ 2008 Feature Pack - x64 - v9.0.30304.00”.
  
  Note: You may have only the x86 runtime to uninstall if you do not have 64-bit VC components installed on your computer.

Setup Issues:

Installation fails on German OS or English OS with German locale.
This issue has been fixed in this update.
Installation will fail if there is a pending system “Restart” request.

For example, if your computer has some Windows updates, but you choose “Restart Later” option and start to install the Feature Pack before rebooting, the installation will fail without giving you an exact message.
The MFC wizards in the English version of Visual Studio are functional when the resource language is set to non-ENU but portions of the generated code will have non-localized comments. Additionally, MFCLOC redist satellites may be partially underlocalized.

MFC Known Issues:

There is a known problem with applications created using the MFC Project Wizard with the following combination of settings:

On User Interface Features page, Command Bars = Use a ribbon (selected by default when you choose any of the Office visual style/colors options)
On Advanced Features page, Printing and print preview = unchecked (unchecked by default when you choose Windows Explorer application type)
On Application Type page, Use of MFC = Use MFC in a static library

Applications generated with these settings may generate Debug Assertion failures when executed. The issue is that because print preview capabilities are added to the ribbon, the print resources are needed. This can be fixed by including afxprint.rc from the project RC file.

TR1 Known Issues:

TR1 consists of new headers (e.g. regex) and additions to existing headers (e.g. memory). The latter should not negatively affect existing projects in any way, except that it may slightly increase compilation times, and it can cause precompiled headers to require more space (through the /Zm option). If necessary, the TR1 additions to existing headers can be disabled by defining _HAS_TR1 to 0 throughout a project.

The following are known issues that are planned to be fixed in a future release:

regex performance is suboptimal.
regex::optimize has no effect. While this is permitted by the TR1 specification, regex::optimize is a suggestion to spend more time during construction in order to accelerate matching.
unordered_set, unordered_multiset, unordered_map, and unordered_multimap performance is suboptimal. Note that their performance is equivalent to that of stdext::hash_set (etc.), as they share the same implementation.
Complicated uses of bind() may fail to compile. For example, simple nested bind() expressions will compile, but complex ones will not.

VC Redist Package

The VCRedist_x86.exe package has been updated with this refresh to resolve previous installation and deployment blocking issues.

© 2008, Microsoft Corporation. All Rights Reserved.

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