I fixed Windows native development • Hacker News Board

Re: I fixed Windows native development

#251

Post by scotty79 » Sun, Feb 15, 2026, 7:21 PM UTC

malkia wrote: post #227

Or... you can "winget install Microsoft.VisualStudio.BuildTools" "winget install Microsoft.WindowsSDK.10.0.26100"

But those are installed system wide. What if you have two different project with different requirements at the same time?

Every language should have a tool like Python uv.

Re: I fixed Windows native development

#252

Post by trilogic » Sun, Feb 15, 2026, 7:22 PM UTC

WOW such a great work. Myself I have been struggling with Mingw just to compile from source. Of course it works much cleaner then the hated visual studio, but then when it comes to cuda compile, that´s it. Visual studio or the magority our there, It is invasive and full of bloatware like you say. Same struggle with electron.

How to match it with cuda to compile from source the repos?

Re: I fixed Windows native development

#253

Post by int0x29 » Sun, Feb 15, 2026, 7:23 PM UTC

Last I checked the license for the headless toolchain requires that a full licensed copy of Visual Studio be installed somewhere. So I think this violates the license terms.

A bug got opened against the rustup installing the headless toolchain by itself at some point. I'll see if I can find it

edit: VSCode bug states this more clearly https://github.com/microsoft/vscode/issues/95745

Re: I fixed Windows native development

#254

Post by scotty79 » Sun, Feb 15, 2026, 7:23 PM UTC

jayd16 wrote: post #156

jordand wrote: post #63

For big C++ projects, the .vsconfig import/export way of handling Visual Studio components has worked well for the large teams I'm on. Tell someone to import a .vsconfig and the Visual Studio Installer does everything. Only times we've had issues is from forgetting to update it with components/SDK changes.

Yeah, seems like this is just ignorance around .vsconfig files. Makes life way easier. You can also just use the VS Build Tools exe to install things instead of the full VS installer, if you plan to use a different IDE.

Can you use .vsconfig to tell Build Tools what your project needs?

Can you generate .vsconfig with Build Tools?

Re: I fixed Windows native development

#255

Post by Graziano_M » Sun, Feb 15, 2026, 7:24 PM UTC

GeoAtreides wrote: post #152

>The key insight are we doomed to only read AI slop from now on? to get a couple paragraphs in and suddenly be hit with the realization that is AI? it's all so tiresome

I literally came to post the exact same line as my indicator that this was AI-generated. I ctrl-f'd first and sure enough I'm not alone in using 'key insight' as the canary.

Re: I fixed Windows native development

#256

Post by Pay08 » Sun, Feb 15, 2026, 7:26 PM UTC

kristjansson wrote: post #230

Pay08 wrote: post #202

Earlier quoted context omitted.

GCC is surprisingly simple to build, fortunately.

Yeah it’s not too bad, but it does pull away from “so trivial it fits in a flippant HN comment”

Does it? Admittedly, it has been a while but I don't remember it differing too much from the good old ./configure && make paradigm with a few flags to both commands.

Re: I fixed Windows native development

#257

Post by 1718627440 » Sun, Feb 15, 2026, 7:28 PM UTC

xvilka wrote: post #28

Borg3 wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Exacly.. I avoid Visual Studio.. I try to build everthing using Mingw..

Clang is the better alternative to MinGW because it can use standard Windows libraries and avoids the need for additional runtime.

MSYS2 UCRT also uses the native Windows libraries (aka. UCRT).

Re: I fixed Windows native development

#258

Post by 1718627440 » Sun, Feb 15, 2026, 7:31 PM UTC

okanat wrote: post #140

reactordev wrote: post #117

Earlier quoted context omitted.

He must be thinking of Cygwin as half of this is installed when you install git ;) Git Bash, etc…

MSYS2 is repacked Cygwin though. It is literally the same codebase compiled with slightly different flags. You need a full Unix environment for Bash to run, not just Mingw toolchain. The difference is Cygwin aims to create a full Unix system while MSYS2 just enough development environment to run bash, make etc to build native Windows programs with Mingw. Git installs its own Mingw and Msys2 stuff but mostly compiled…

A repacked Cygwin is one environment, but the default uses the UCRT from Microsoft.

Re: I fixed Windows native development

#259

Post by yellowapple » Sun, Feb 15, 2026, 7:32 PM UTC

I don't get why people go through all these flaming hoops and hurdles to deal with MSVC when MinGW and MinGW-w64/MSYS2 are options. In the latter case you even still get (mostly complete) MSVC ABI-compatibility if you compile with clang.

Re: I fixed Windows native development

#260

Post by frankohn » Sun, Feb 15, 2026, 7:35 PM UTC

its_notjack wrote: post #34

Is this post AI-written? The repeated lists with highlighted key points, the "it's not just [x], but [y]" and "no [a] just [b]" scream LLM to me. It would be good to know how much of this post and this project was human-built.

I analyzed the test using Pangram, which is apparently reliable, it say "Fully human Written" without ambiguity.[1]

I personally like the content and the style of the article. I never managed to accept going through the pain to install and use Visual Studio and all these absurd procedures they impose to their users.

[1] https://www.pangram.com/history/300b4af2-cd58-4767-aced-c4d2...