Which of the visual studio versions / languages can be used to create
win32 native executables?

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Clarification of Question by markpalk-ga on 25 Oct 2005 13:00 PDT

The term "win32 native" in this context refers to an executable image
that can be run on a machine that does *not* have the .net runtime
installed.

-Mark

Almost all of them can except for some of the limited student versions.

If you get .NET then you can still create Native Win32 applications
that don't require the .NET framework.  There are a host of
application "types" you can create in in Visual Studio.

I suggest researching in a good book for more information on the types
of projects you can create.

Visual Studio 6.0 and .NET are the most commonly used Visual Studio compilers.

It's a bit dicey to guess what is meant by "Win32 native executables".
 Microsoft uses terminology like this in the context of Visual Studio
.Net to distinguish between compiling C++ source into a .Net
application or one that isn't, which then is termed a "native
executable".

One can in some sense create "native executables" even within the .Net
Framework.  Ordinarily a .Net application will be serviced by JIT
(Just in Time compilation), but it is possible to force a previous
compilation to be loaded.  However the CLR (Common Language Runtime)
is still required (since it has become effectively the loader for .Net
applications), so such executables are not truly "standalone".  But
then, no Windows program really is.

At the other extreme one might demand that a "native executable" be
written from scratch in x86 assembler.  Although I've used in-line
assembly language code snippets within the framework of a "native"
C/C++ program and (long-ago) tweaked the assembler listings of
high-level (C) source code before applying MASM to produce object
files for linking, I've never written a whole Windows program this
way.  I think MASM was last distributed with the Enterprise version of
VS 6.0.

regards, mathtalk-ga

Any Visual Studio version can do this. I compile programs all the time
in Visual Studio .NET 2003 for non-.NET computers.

for Visual Basic, make a Windows Application or console application project.

for C++, make a Win32 console application or MFC Project or Win32 Project.

for Java, you will need a version of Visual Studio <= 6.0, with Visual
J++. In Visual Studio .NET, they replaced this with what they call
"J#". It will still compile existing JAVA code, but it compiles it
into .NET binaries that can only run on .NET machines.

In .NET versions of Visual Studio, when you use the new project
wizard, all of the project types that require .NET will have ".NET" in
the name, so it is perfectly clear which ones you can use.

It is not possible to create a C# program using any version of Visual
Studio that does not require .NET on the client computer.

Also, do not use anything like "Managed C++" or anything regarding
"Common Runtime Libraries".