Compiler recommendations for windows C++ application?

[rich_p]

Hi all,

I am creating a C++ GUI application for Windows 7 using the latest version of Qt (5.0) with Qt designer. Are there any trade considerations with respect to compiler selection? MinGW vs. MVSC? MVSC2012 vs. MVSC2010 vs. other? Any suggestions or recommendations would be greatly appreciated.

[Serenity]

I would use MinGW, because you would use it also under Linux and Mac. If there will be never ever a MacOSX oder Linux port, then try to find out the differences between the Microsoft Compilers (Maybe some points in performance, debugging etc.)

[koahnig]

As already suggested by Serenlty.
If you have already an msvc or if you are familiar use that one. If you plan to use the free msvc version, you may use it Qt creator and with an external debugger. IMHO not much different from using MinGW.

I am using at the moment MinGW with Qt creator. This combination has some things, I did not have with msvc2005. However, the operation with a licensed msvc2005 and its integrated debugger was better than the operation of gdb through Qt creator.

[rich_p]

Thanks for the quick responses. Are there any issues with using MinGW-64bit when creating 64-bit or 32-bit binaries?

[koahnig]

Currently only the 32 bit MinGW is pre-build with Qt 5.1. The 64 bit you would have to build yourself. AFAIK that should be possible.
I have done Qt compilation of Qt 4.8.4 with MinGW 64 bit end of last year. That was possible with some minor issues (sloppy programming was discovered in one or two cases). However, at the time I am debating with myself, if it is worth the effort. Byte alignment and memory slack proofed to eat too much memory in my case and I do see real advantages.
The debug exes and debug libs for 64 bit builds are shockingly large.

[JKSH]

A maintainer of the MinGW-builds project has provided a precompiled version of Qt 5.1.0 with Qt Creator 2.8.0-RC for MinGW 64-bit: http://sourceforge.net/projects/mingwbuilds/files/external-binary-packages/Qt-Builds/