VisualAge C++

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VA.GIF

IBM VisualAge C++ also commonly known in the OS/2 user community as VAC and as VAC++ in the AIX community, is a multi-platform C and C++ development package that replaced the IBM C Set++ for OS/2 package with a more modern visually oriented development system written in Smalltalk like the rest of the VisualAge products. It came with a WPS integrated "Workframe" that replaced the mostly text based WorkFrame/2 and was a integrated product unlike the latter tool, an "Visual Builder" for visual programming of visual and non-visual parts, compiler/linker, a Debugger and sundry build and Make tools and other utilities.

If certain rules were followed code written under the VisualAge C++ system was portable between OS/2, MS Windows and AIX without any changes, and the package offered a number of tools and libraries to ease porting between the supported operating systems.

Versions

  • Version 5 was delivered in 2000 and version 6 in 2003, both were only made available for AIX and both had and additional separate command line only compiler equivalent to the "IBM C and C++ Compilers" that is known as simply "C for AIX".

IBM C and C++ Compilers Version 3.6.5

As VisualAge 4.0 was a radical step forward it meant that as it stood the tool-chain was not compatible with earlier C projects that were developed in VAC version 3.x or IBM C Set++ for OS/2, this was in particular problematic for driver development that all relied on code that needed quite a bit of massaging to work with 4. This could become something of a cost issue for IBM since re-writing their entire driver codebase could get expensive and it was decided that releasing an updated version of the 3.x tool that only received limited updates was cheaper than wasting time on updating older code for no other reason. So a command line compiler with a version number 3.6.5 is shipped with VAC4 in versions available for OS/2, AIX and MS Windows. IBM called it the "IBM C & C++ Compiler" rather than VisualAge since it did not feature any visual tools, but actually it is an update of the compiler included in VAC 3.x and has better compatibility with projects created with VAC 3.5 for MS Windows.

  • C & C++ Compilers are command line only and therefore do not support any visual tools built into the IDE, including Visual Builder, Configuration Optimizer, Data Access Builder, IDE debugging. The kit however comes with a separate graphical debugger and text mode debugging using classic IBM or third party tools is supported as well. You could also use visual tools from VisualAge C++ 3.0 with some caveats though.
  • Other v4 IDE bound features such as incremental compilation are not supported.
  • However the improved memory management routines that were introduced with v4 are supplied with 3.6.5, as are separate resource tools for creating and compiling resources and converting resources between platforms.
  • Also includes the full-text online help search engine.
  • Like the rest of the 3.x branch, 3.6 is ANSI C++ 1992 compliant rather than ANSI 1998 as VAC4 is and it does not support ANSI/ISO STL, however unlike the older 3.x versions it does support Open Class 4.0.
  • Available in Simplified Chinese and Japanese in addition to English.
  • Last known OS/2 version is 3.6.5-FP2 for the English version and 3.6.5-FP1 for the Simplified Chinese and Japanese versions. Last known MS Windows version is 3.6.5-FP2-TF2 for the English variant, 3.6.5-FP2 for the Japanese one and 3.6.5-FP1 for the Chinese version.

Version 3.5

See also: IBM VisualAge C++ 3.5

Version 3.0

See also: IBM VisualAge C++ 3.0

Links

  • There is a number of optional tools and utilities to be found on the IBM FTP site, these are mostly for the 3.x branch.
  • Updates for the AIX versions of VisualAge C++ can be found here.
C/C++ 3.6.5 updates
  • The last fixpack for the English OS/2 version of 3.6.5 is Fixpack 2, and Fixpack 1 for the Chinese and Japanese versions of the tool.
  • The Windows version of 3.6.5 also has English Fixpack 2 but there was also a Postfix issued that can be found in the e-fix051200 subfolder. The Japanese version also got a Fixpack 2 while the Simplified Chinese version stalled at Fixpack 1.

VisualAge C++ 4 updates

VAC Extensions and VAC++ specific libraries

Publications

  • Nilsson, Jakab: VisualAge for C++ Visual Programmer's Handbook - Prentice Hall, ISBN 0-13-614322-9
IBM Redbooks
  • SG24-5489 - Getting to Know VisualAge C++ Version 4.0

Local articles

License

  • Commercial software - Discontinued

Publisher