Is ATL getting abandoned by Microsoft?

[Thursday]

Hi,

I'd prefer to use ATL rather than MFC but someone told me ATL is getting
abandoned. Looks like it has a fair learning curve so I thought I'd
check here before investing time.

Is ATL still getting bugfixes and new features? When was the last update?

I hope ATL is going strong...it seems to be the best way to keep
programs very lightweight while avoiding lots of manual win32/com
coding. I'd primarily use it for Office/Outlook addins.

Thanks.

[Igor Tandetnik]

"Thursday" <nos...@nospam.nospam.nospam.nospam.org> wrote in message
news:FKdae.2814$L03....@newssvr17.news.prodigy.com

> I'd prefer to use ATL rather than MFC but someone told me ATL is
> getting abandoned. Looks like it has a fair learning curve so I
> thought I'd check here before investing time.
>
> Is ATL still getting bugfixes and new features? When was the last
> update?

A new and improved version of ATL comes out with every release of Visual
Studio. You can check here what's new in ATL8 that will ship with VS
2005 (now in beta):

http://msdn2.microsoft.com/library/y8bt6w34

No big new features are planned, but bugs are most certainly being
fixed. To see for yourself, go to

http://lab.msdn.microsoft.com/productfeedback/

and search for ATL-related bug reports.
--
With best wishes,
Igor Tandetnik

With sufficient thrust, pigs fly just fine. However, this is not
necessarily a good idea. It is hard to be sure where they are going to
land, and it could be dangerous sitting under them as they fly
overhead. -- RFC 1925

[David Lowndes]

>I'd prefer to use ATL rather than MFC but someone told me ATL is getting
>abandoned.

ATL is still going strong. Perhaps what you've heard is that MS seem
to have decided that the attributed notation has fallen out of favour,
so the general recommendation is perhaps not to use that
implementation of ATL - stick with the "classic" one.

Dave
--
MVP VC++ FAQ: http://www.mvps.org/vcfaq

[Egbert Nierop (MVP for IIS)]

"David Lowndes" <dav...@example.invalid> wrote in message
news:rp2k61dnp5beap5ki...@4ax.com...

> >I'd prefer to use ATL rather than MFC but someone told me ATL is getting
>>abandoned.
>
> ATL is still going strong. Perhaps what you've heard is that MS seem
> to have decided that the attributed notation has fallen out of favour,
> so the general recommendation is perhaps not to use that
> implementation of ATL - stick with the "classic" one.

That would really be a pity. You MVP's should encourage MS to improve the
attributed features and fix the bugs :<

Look at the simplicity of attributes as below...
If I would use the 'classic' notation of such a class, it becomes a lot less
readable.
[db_command(L"{CALL dbo.procBlah(?,?)}", bindings=L"", bulk_fetch=0)]

class cBlah

{

public:

[db_param(1)] BYTE m_App_KeyPar[16];

[db_param(2)] BYTE m_GUIDPar[16];

void GetRowsetProperties(CDBPropSet* pPropSet)

{

pPropSet->AddProperty(DBPROP_COMMANDTIMEOUT, (LONG)30);

}

};

[Alexander Nickolov]

Like everything in life, attributes can't be good for everything :).
You are showing a very good application of attributes. ATL
Server is another example. However, interface definition is
_not_ a good application of attributes, since it defeats the main
purpose of COM - separating interface from implementation!
Thus the fact attributed ATL is broken for IDispatch and events
doesn't bother us - in fact it's a good thing :) so we can tell
everybody not to use attributed ATL. Of course when one
goes into non-COM aspects of ATL this is not relevant anymore.

--
=====================================
Alexander Nickolov
Microsoft MVP [VC], MCSD
email: agnic...@mvps.org
MVP VC FAQ: http://www.mvps.org/vcfaq
=====================================

"Egbert Nierop (MVP for IIS)" <egbert...@nospam.invalid> wrote in
message news:exss$tjSFH...@TK2MSFTNGP12.phx.gbl...