Visual Studio: Difference between revisions

* Output Directory: .

: Add a post-build step to copy only the ''real'' output file to the bin directory. Otherwise VS puts .lib and some linker files there as well.

* Intermediate Directory: .

* Additional Include Directories: <set as needed>

* Debug Information Format: Disabled

: At the stage my OS is in, I have no use for PDB files. I am in the process of writing a debugger, though, so in the future this could change.

* Warning Level: Level 4 (/W4)

* Detect 64-bit Portability Issues: No

: This relies on a special __w64 token in various typedefs. I do not know how to use this with my OS. Just be careful: int and long are still 32-bit if compiling for a x64 target (using VS 2005)

* Optimization: Minimize Size (/O1)

: This is really up to you. For me, space is more important than speed for now, but this can easily be changed. If you are implementing source-level debugging, you might want to disable all optimizations.

* Global Optimizations: Yes (/Og)

* Favor Size Or Speed: Favor Small Code (/Os)

* Optimize for Processor: Pentium Pro, II, III (/G6)

* Ignore Standard Include Path: Yes (/X)

* Enable String Pooling: Yes (/GF)

: Places string literals in a read-only data section. This doesn't mean much for OS code, but enable this ONLY if you do not modify string literals in-place, as this would change it in all instances.

* Enable Minimal Rebuild: No

: Rebuilds seem to go fast enough, and enabling this seems to add 0xCC pad bytes to the EXE, which causes bloating.

* Enable C++ Exceptions: No

: Unless you have an exceptional (pun intended) configuration, these require runtime support and are generally not needed anyways.

* Basic Runtime Checks: Default

* Struct Member Alignment: 1 Byte (/Zp1)

: This is really up to you, but most structs that I have need to be aligned this way. If you choose default (8 byte), you can use #pragma pack(push, 1) and #pragma pack(pop) to adjust the packing. Consult MSDN for more info.

* Buffer Security Check: No

* Language

* Force Conformance in For Loop Scope: Yes (/Zc:forScope)

* Output Files

* Assembler Output: Assembly, Machine Code, and Source (/FAcs)

: Outputs the assembly listing of the code to files in a given directory. This is nice for assembly-level debugging, as it has the source code lines nearby.

* ASM List Location: <directory>\

* Advanced

* Calling Convention: __stdcall (/Gz)

: Again, up to you, but I find the lack of name decoration handy for debugging. Functions declared ''extern "C" void [[Do Something]](int p1, int p2)'' show up as _[[Do Something]]@8 rather than ?@[[Do Something]]@YAXZSASD or similar.

* Command Line

* /Oy-

: Disables frame pointer (EBP) omission, included with optimization for size. This is handy to get stack backtraces in case of a crash.

* General

* Output File: <set as needed>

* Enable Incremental Linking: No (/INCREMENTAL:NO)

* Additional Library Directories: <set as needed>

* Input

* Ignore All Default Libraries: Yes (/NODEFAULTLIB)

* Debugging

* Generate Debug Info: No

* Generate Map File: Yes (/MAP)

: Generates a map file (function name and address) and actually ''sorts'' by ascending address, unlike GCC.

* Map File Name: <set as needed>

* Optimization

* References: Eliminate Unreferenced Data

* Enable COMDAT Folding: Remove Redundant COMDATs

* Advanced

* Entry Point: <set as needed>

: The linker will complain if it is not __stdcall with 12 bytes of arguments (3 32-bit params), but is only a warning.

* Fixed Base Address: Generate a relocation section

* Command Line

* /DRIVER

* /ALIGN: 512

: Together, they set the [[Section Alignment]] and [[File Alignment]] to 512 bytes. My boot loader is not sophisticated enough to handle these being different. The downside is that restrictions (read-only, etc) on sections are meaningless, as they require page-granularity for hopefully obvious reasons.