Developing in the new Version of Microsoft Visual Studio

matew

Hello! I'm new here.

I want to get into creating plugins using the DAZ SDK. I'm working on a Windows 64bit environment. I've downloaded the latest version of the SDK and installed the latest version of Microsoft Visual Studio 2022 Community, but now I see in the documentation that I needed Microsoft Visual Studio 2010. How critical is this? Can I still work in Microsoft Visual C++ 2022?

ainm.sloinneadh

You can. I am.

The key thing is to set the correct options in CMake. I've just closed my computer down, but from memory I used the Visual Studio 14 (2015) generatoe with v100 set in the text field box below. I think it was called arguments or something. I can't remember if I downloaded the VS14 tools separately, if they are downloadable from within Visual Studio 22 installer or if they were already bundled, but rest assured it is possible. I wouldn't want to say it's easy, but it could be - a lot of my trials and tribulations were about figuring out what I needed to do rather than doing anything particularly complicated.

Richard Haseltine

This is discussed in the documentation, ./docs/compile_win.html

While the exact version of the Microsoft Visual Studio IDE used to develop a DAZ Studio plugin can vary (VS 2017 is being used internally at the time of this writing), the application itself is compiled with the Microsoft Visual C++ 2010 (v100) compiler. This is an important detail because it means that in order to avoid compatibility issues with the allocation and/or freeing of memory, any code that is intended to communicate directly with the application must also be compiled with the same compiler. That being said, it is possible for a plugin to act as a "shim" and marshal data between the application and an another library/engine that is compiled with a compiler other than the Microsoft Visual C++ 2010 compiler.

More recently 2019 and 2022 have been used, but still compiling using the 2010 version.

vectorinus

Hello! I use VS 2015. Although I think the 2017 version is the best (just can’t leave my old reliable lady).
I think it's better to first try to compile the examples supplied with DAZ SDK. They are already configured correctly for Visual Studio. If you start with your own project, then it may not work due to the incorrect location of the SDK and moc compiler folders. It is also easy to make errors in the directives for creating moc files, etc. As a result, you will not find out the real reason why your project did not compile: an error in its creation or incompatibility of the SDK with the new version of Visual Studio.