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Andrew
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Visual Studio Code
#387871 - 09/14/20 03:52 AM


Is Visual Studio Code a good choice for MAME coding or does Visual Studio IDE provide a better experience? Or does MAMEdev recommend something else?



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Vas Crabb
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Re: Visual Studio Code new [Re: Andrew]
#387880 - 09/15/20 03:23 AM


They aren’t the same thing at all. VS Code is a text editor. It’s based on Atom running on an embedded Chromium engine, so it uses a shitload of RAM, and the way it polls git status by regularly launching git to scan the tree has a very noticeable performance impact on Windows. Visual Studio is an integrated development environment. I’ve found it’s more efficient to just work in vim.



lharms
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Re: Visual Studio Code new [Re: Andrew]
#388006 - 09/27/20 06:35 AM


Having used both over the years. I personally like visual studio more. But that is more nostalgia than it being objectively better. VSCode has tons of very nice plugins for formatting and coding things up nicely. VSCode does have a fairly steep memory overhead though. But if you have enough it is not that big of a deal. I like visual studio more as the default install is fairly robust and has everything you need to be a productive windows programmer. VSCode is more plug and play and you need to find the right set of plugins to make it happy for c/c++ coding. There are plenty of tutorials on what you need out there. But once you do it is is fine too. They are both free so I would say grab both and give them a try and see what you like.

Edited by lharms (09/27/20 06:36 AM)



Andrew
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Re: Visual Studio Code new [Re: lharms]
#388014 - 09/28/20 01:43 AM


> I would say grab both and give them a try and see what you like.

Thanks but I don't think I'm cut out for it. I can't even get the build tools installed and updated without running into errors.



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lharms
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Re: Visual Studio Code new [Re: Andrew]
#388017 - 09/28/20 05:57 AM


> > I would say grab both and give them a try and see what you like.
>
> Thanks but I don't think I'm cut out for it. I can't even get the build tools
> installed and updated without running into errors.

Do not get too discouraged! A good way to work around issues like that is to create a VM using virtual box. Then use the snapshot system built into that. That way you can break things and try things out. If it does not work it is dead easy to reset to a known working state. It is also interesting to learn how to fix without really breaking anything valuable. I use it all the time if I am experimenting with software that has the possibility of messing up your computer.

For VSCode I personally use the .zip version. You unzip it into a folder and it is pretty much ready to go out of the box. Then use the built in 'store' to find plugins. If I remember correctly there is a .vscode folder it creates in your user folder and that holds all of the plugins and data there may be something in appdata but I have not had to reset one yet. I think if you mess it up you can pretty much delete/rename those two folders and start over. Of course you may want to try that in a VM first.

For Visual Studio it is much more of a classic windows program. It installs dozens of packages, SDKs, framerworks, etc. There is an all in one uninstaller out there that removes everything about visual studio from your computer. I have had luck with it in the past. The downside is likes to remove the CRT versions that some games like to use. So you may need to reinstall them. Usually they are found in the game install or from the MS website.

Also sometimes the docs do not always match up to the version of visual studio that is out there (I assume mame is up to date). One project I mess with assumes visual studio 2015. So you have to kinda roll with the 4+ years of updates that MS has put into its tooling and some stuff moving around and changing. I use visual studio community 2019 right now. The install system is different and what the SDKs do and what checkmarks to put when installing can be interesting.



Andrew
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Re: Visual Studio Code new [Re: lharms]
#388033 - 09/30/20 12:48 AM


> Do not get too discouraged! ...

Thanks for the encouragement!

I was able to install the build tools without error this time using the prepackaged installer by unpacking to C: (rather than F:) and not attempting to update the build tools. I successfully downloaded the source using git clone and compiled without issue.

Progress!




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lharms
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Re: Visual Studio Code new [Re: Andrew]
#388036 - 09/30/20 02:54 AM


> > Do not get too discouraged! ...
>
> Thanks for the encouragement!
>
> I was able to install the build tools without error this time using the prepackaged
> installer by unpacking to C: (rather than F and not attempting to update the build
> tools. I successfully downloaded the source using git clone and compiled without
> issue.
>
> Progress!

Good start!

I would recommend creating a github account and making a couple of throwaway repos there in addition to some local ones, for playing with git (making branches, pulling from them, and pushing). The idea for it is straightforward but the interface leaves a lot to be desired.


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