VS 2008 and vc90.pdb?

[Larry Lindstrom]

Hi Again Folks:

Developing on XP Mediacenter, C++, VS 2008 Pro, WIN32, no MFC.

I've been developing an application with VC6, and am trying to
get my first build using VS 2008. These errors are generated when
compiling files I'm using to build static libraries.

1>c:\..._dialogbox.cpp : error C2471:
cannot update program database 'c:\documents ...\debug\vc90.pdb'
1>c:\..._dialogbox.cpp : fatal error C1083:
Cannot open program database file: 'c:\documents ...\vc90.pdb': No
such file or directory

This pair of error messages seems to be repeated for each source
file in the library's directory.

MSDN gives this as the cause:

There is a limit of 4096 modules (.obj files) in a PDB file.
The file also has a total size limit of approximately 64 MB.

There is a vc90.pdb and a vc90.idb in the debug directory that's
under the library's directory with its source files. There are 56
object files in the debug directory, vc90.pdb's size is 1540 KB.

I haven't done anything to prepare my VC6 projects for VS 2008,
but the first time I attempted a build a popup informed me that
the files were being converted somehow.

Suggestions?

Thanks
Larry

[Sebastian G.]

Larry Lindstrom wrote:

> 1>c:\..._dialogbox.cpp : error C2471:
> cannot update program database 'c:\documents ...\debug\vc90.pdb'
> 1>c:\..._dialogbox.cpp : fatal error C1083:
> Cannot open program database file: 'c:\documents ...\vc90.pdb': No
> such file or directory

> [...]

> Suggestions?

Known bug, though no hotfix available yet.

[Larry Lindstrom]

Thanks Sebastian:

Any workaround?

Does that mean I can't use VS 2008?

Is it time to re-install VC6? I have VC6's platform SDK disk.

Can the two IDEs live together on my PC? With their CRTs?

I appreciate your info, but OUCH!

Thanks
Larry

[Sebastian G.]

Larry Lindstrom wrote:

> Any workaround?

I have sometimes seen that a simple complete rebuild of the solution works,
sometimes recreating the project files helps, sometimes moving around the
directory containing the solution... sometimes I simply restarted the
virtual machine.

> Does that mean I can't use VS 2008?

No. At any rate, the msbuild command line tool always works. But so far the
workarounds above always managed to fix the problem.

> Can the two IDEs live together on my PC? With their CRTs?

Possibly, though Microsoft recommends not doing so. And, in fact, VC6 is
horribly outdated and full of really nasty bugs, outdated or even wrong
headers, so it might be better fully migrating to VS2008.

[Larry Lindstrom]

Sebastian G. wrote:
> Larry Lindstrom wrote:
>
>
>> Any workaround?
>
>
> I have sometimes seen that a simple complete rebuild of the solution
> works, sometimes recreating the project files helps, sometimes moving
> around the directory containing the solution... sometimes I simply
> restarted the virtual machine.

Thanks Sebastian:

Can you point me to a site that describes the known bugs?

Since most of us in this newsgroup use Microsoft's development
tools I think this is a good form to discuss these issues. Is there
a more appropriate place?

I kind of pointed VS 2008 at my top level VC6 project and told it
to build. VS 2008 told me it was converting some files and started
building the components of the VC6 workgroup.

Now I think I'll carefully build the static libraries individually,
as described in the tutorial, and see what happens.

How about my SHGetFolderLocation() - SHGetKnownFolderIDList()
problem? Any Suggestions?

Thanks
Larry

[Sebastian G.]

Larry Lindstrom wrote:

> Can you point me to a site that describes the known bugs?

No description, I only got this information via phone when calling the tech
support.

> How about my SHGetFolderLocation() - SHGetKnownFolderIDList()
> problem? Any Suggestions?

Take a look at the warnings and watch for macro redefinitions. I've seen
third party libraries where some files define WINNT_VERSION but other don't,
or even to different values, which of course results in big inconsistencies.