VisualAge C++

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 C Set++ 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".

Version 4

A radical update to VAC that merges the IDE and compiler into one program that brings with it a host of benefits that are not really or not easily possible with a traditional C compiler such as incremental compilation. Originally released on 1998-12-18, and in addition to the VAC 4 development kit the package also came with a copy of "IBM C and C++ Compilers Version 3.6.5" (See below).

• ANSI/ISO 1998 C++ compatible, also supports and comes with ANSI/ISO STL, and Open Class 4.0.
• Available in Simplified Chinese and Japanese in addition to English.
• Last known Windows version is 4.0.3, while last known OS/2 versions are 4.0.1.

There was some acrimony towards IBM from OS/2 users of VAC4, IBM initially announced the end of life of the product in 1999 for both MS Windows and OS/2 while it kept updating the AIX version. The announcement was less than a year from the original release of the product and despite the release of Fixpack 1 for both the Windows and OS/2 had some serious bugs that left the tools more or less useless. After an uproar from VAC customers and after it had been pointed out that this could lead to lawsuits since this state of affairs contravened consumer protection laws in a number of countries, IBM decided to extend the support into 2001 and promised a Fixpack 2 for OS/2 and MS Windows, but only delivered fixes for the Windows product, in fact delivered two fixpacks which actually left the Windows version quite usable and a number of third parties used it for some large projects. But the OS/2 version of VAC4 remains mostly unusable and the bulk of OS/2 developers used the 3.6.5 version instead.

IBM copyright notice

Desktop folder after 3.6.5 installation

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, 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.

• VAC 3.x is command line only and therefore does not support any visual tools built into the VAC4 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 the 3.0.x branch with 3.6.5, 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 introduced in v4.
• 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.x

Because of the large amount of changes needed to support Windows 95 and NT a version of 3.0.x for MS Windows was never released, however a version 3.5 was introduced that is mostly compatible with the OS/2 v3.0.x variant and is even better supported with 3.6.5.

• Available in German and Japanese in addition to English.
• Last known version is 3.5.9-PF1 for the English version, 3.5.9 for the Japanese version and 3.5.2 for the German version.

Version 3.0.x

Initial release of the VisualAge C++ toolkit, it gets version number 3 since it is a follow on to the IBM C Set package, this was an OS/2 only product with Windows and AIX versions not showing up until v3.5 and 4.

• ANSI 1992 C++ compliant, supports templates but not namespaces that were introduced in a later ANSI STL standard.
• Available in German and Japanese in addition to English.
• IBM kept issuing fixes up until 2001 for the compiler which meant that it was in many ways the most stable C toolkit available for OS/2 both in regards to code and app stability, it is for many the most preferred version of the tool especially for driver programming although most application developers that do not need the visual tools that come with 3.0.x prefer using the later 3.6.5.
• Last known OS/2 version is 3.0.8-TFP2 for the English version, 3.06 for the German and Japanese versions

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.

VisualAge C++ 3.x updates

Study the readme text files that comes with the fixpack files, the fixpack files need to be installed in a specific order.

• VAC 3.0.8 English Fixpack 8 - Note you will also need the Post fix pack 1 and 2 located in the "tempfix" directory to update it to 3.0.8-TFP2 and the Eurofix file that post dates TFP2
• VAC 3.0.6 Fixpack 6 for the German version and Fixpack 6 for the Japanese version.
• Version 3.5 for MS Windows has English Fixpack 9 available for it, but you should also install the fixes included in PostFix 1. The German version has Fixpack 2 available and the Japanese version has Fixpack 9 but none of the Postfixes introduced for the English version.
• 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

• Fixpack 1 for OS/2 can be found here for the English language tool, the Japanese version can be found here and the Simplified Chinese one here.
• Fixpack 3 for VAC4 for Windows can be found for the English version here and for the Japanese version here. The Simplified Chinese version only got Fixpack 1.

VAC Extensions

• LPEX macro extension for VisualAge C++ by Lars Erdmann

License

• Commercial software - Discontinued.

Author

• IBM

Publications

• Carrel-Billiard, Jakab, Mauny, Vetter: Object-Oriented Application Development with IBM VisualAge for C++ for OS/2. ISBN 0-13-242447-9
• Nilsson, Jakab: VisualAge for C++ Visual Programmer's Handbook. ISBN 0-13-614322-9
• IBM RedBook - Getting to Know VisualAge C++ Version 4.0

Local articles

• A Review of VisualAge C++ Version 4.0 by Gordon Zeglinski (May 1999)
• C++ Compiler Review - Part 1 by Gordon Zeglinski (August 1995)
• VisualAge C++ Tips by Dave Briccetti (August 2000)