[Libreoffice] Windows builds with Visual Studio Express

[Mathias Bauer]

Am 17.09.2011 15:01, schrieb Fridrich Strba:

> Hello, Mathias,
> 
> On 17/09/11 00:01, Mathias Bauer wrote:
>> As you might know, building with VS Express requires disabling usage of
>> ATL headers as they are missing in the Express version.
>> When I was working on another project that forced me to build Chromium,
>> I found in their build instructions that the MS Windows Driver
>> Development Kit contains the necessary atl headers and libs. The WDK can
>> be downloaded freely, so I assume that it's OK to use them build with VS
>> Express *and* atl (if it works as it sounds).
> 
> Thanks for the hint. It is really something to try and modify oowintool
> to look for DDK's headers too if it finds the VS2008 Express is used.
> 
> I once wondered what we actually use the ATL for, but never had the
> motivation to look. Normally Windows developers use ATL to make their
> COM+ programming easier. If this is the case for LO, I would even
> contend that trying to rewrite those pieces in a plain C++ could be good
> idea, because it would allow us to build them with MinGW too.
> 
> I did some COM+ programming in evolution in C++ first and then I rewrote
> that part in plain C, so I believe that it is something doable.
> Although, I have to look what we really use the ATL for.

AFAIR it was used in some of the OLE implementations (embeddedobj or
embedserv) and for the ActiveX-Control (extensions/source/soactivex). I
agree that at least for the first part reimplementing would be a good
idea, and in fact I once had planned to do that. Admittedly it was never
important enough.

Regards,
Mathias