Background

In June, we announced enhanced targeting for Windows XP using the Visual Studio 2012 C++ compiler and libraries. This feature has been included in Visual Studio 2012 Update 1 CTP 3. You can download it from here. Today, we would like to give an overview of the Windows XP targeting experience, the level of C++ runtime support, and noteworthy differences from the default experience shipped in Visual Studio 2012 at RTM.

Windows XP Targeting Experience

In order to target Windows XP, switch from the default v110 toolset to the newly introduced v110_xp toolset inside your project’s property pages. This new platform toolset points to a repackaged version of the Windows 7 SDK shipped in Visual Studio 2010 instead of the Windows 8 SDK, but uses the same Visual Studio 2012 compiler. The v110_xp toolset also sets useful defaults such as a compatible linker subsystem version for downlevel targeting. Only executables built with this platform toolset are supported to run on Windows XP, but those same executables will also run on Vista, Windows 7 and Windows 8. 

C++ Runtime Support

The static and dynamic link libraries for the CRT, ConCRT/PPL, STL, and MFC have been updated in-place to add runtime support for Windows XP and Windows Server 2003. Applications written in C++/CLI which target the .NET Framework 4.0 will also run on Windows XP and Windows Server 2003. For these operating systems, the supported versions are Windows XP SP3 for x86, Windows XP SP2 for x64, and Windows Server 2003 SP2 for both x86 and x64.

Differences from Vista+ Targeting

1. Building HLSL
   Building HLSL with the v110_xp toolset is not enabled by default. To enable HLSL compilation, download the DirectX SDK (June 2010) and set your project’s VC directories manually to point to this SDK, in a similar manner as Visual Studio 2010. For more information, see the “DirectX SDK Does Not Register Include/Library Paths with Visual Studio 2010” section of the DirectX SDK (June 2010) download page.
    
2. Debugging DirectX
   The Visual Studio 2012 Graphics Debugging experience is not supported when targeting DirectX 9.
    
3. Static Analysis
   When selecting the v110_xp platform toolset, the static analysis experience is disabled due to incompatibilities between the SAL annotations in the Visual Studio 2012 C++ libraries and the Windows 7 SDK. If static analysis is required, we recommend that you switch the solution to the normal v110 toolset, execute static analysis, and then switch back to v110_xp.
    
4. Remote Debugging
   The Remote Tools for Visual Studio 2012 do not support remote debugging on an XP client. When debugging on Windows XP is required, it is recommended to use the debuggers of an older version of Visual Studio, such as Visual Studio 2010, for local or remote debugging. This is in line with the Windows Vista experience for Visual Studio 2012 RTM, which is a runtime target but not a remote debugging target.

Known issues with Visual Studio 2012 Update 1 CTP 3

There are two known issues with the CTP 3 release. These will be fixed in the next release of Visual Studio 2012 Update 1:

1. The Visual C++ 2012 Redistributables in “Microsoft Visual Studio 11.0\VC\redist\1033” have not been updated to include Windows XP support. For this preview release, please use static linking when targeting Windows XP or deploy the C++ runtime DLLs from “Microsoft Visual Studio 11.0\VC\redist\” inside your executable’s installation folder.
2. Registering in-process ATL components currently fails on Windows XP and Windows Server 2003. A workaround is to use registration-free COM.

Feedback

As always, we'd love to hear your feedback. Please submit bugs to Visual Studio Connect, and suggestions to Visual Studio UserVoice.