The Hidden Costs of Requiring Visual Studio for Native Project Builds
By
deevus
Baker's choice. Dense with flavour, light on filler.
Summary
The article discusses the challenges of maintaining native projects that require Visual Studio as a build dependency on Windows. It highlights how listing Visual Studio as a requirement turns project maintainers into unpaid tech support for Microsoft's Visual Studio Installer, with GitHub issues shifting from code problems to broken Windows builds. The content focuses on the frustrations of dealing with Visual Studio installation and compatibility issues in open-source projects.
Key quotes
· 5 pulledIf you're lucky enough not to know this yet, I envy you. Unfortunately, at this point even Boromir knows...
What you may not realize is, you've actually signed up to be unpaid tech support for Microsoft's 'Visual Studio Installer'.
You might notice GitHub Issues becoming less about your code and more about broken builds, specifically on Windows.
You find yourself explaining to a contributor...
Imagine you're maintaining a native project. You use Visual Studio for building on Windows, so you do the responsible thing and list it as a dependency.
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