** Help for users of the "msvc" compiler **

The "msvc" compiler provides support for Microsoft Visual C++.  You
are required to have your environment set up for use of the compiler
on the command line.  There's usually a shortcut that creates a shell
set up in this way, and there is a batch file that does it as well.
For details, consult your Visual C++ documentation.  There is also
some discussion in the abuild manual.

As of the release of abuild 1.1, the msvc compiler support is known to
work with Visual C++ .NET 2003, .NET 2005, and .NET 2008.  Both full
enterprise and "express" versions have been tested.

We support building both static libraries and shared libraries.
Abuild creates DLL files for shared libraries.  Any version number
information provided in the SHLIB_libname variable is ignored.

By default, we compile with /Zi for all compiles.  /Zi enables
debugging and causes debugging information to be written to the .pdb
file.  We have observed that cl has trouble with long path names when
invoked without /Zi.  Microsoft support suggests that we should use
/Zi for all builds, including release builds.  See
http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/xe4t6fc1.aspx for additional
discussion.

You can override this behavior by changing the value of
MSVC_GLOBAL_FLAGS.  See make/toolchains/msvc.mk for additional
details.

There are two additional variables that you can configure:

  MSVC_MANAGEMENT_FLAGS (default /EHsc)
  MSVC_RUNTIME_FLAGS (default /MD)

You can build for .NET by setting MSVC_MANAGEMENT_FLAGS /clr.

You can build executables that link the runtime environment
statically, thus avoiding a runtime dependency on MSVCRT*.dll, by
setting MSVC_RUNTIME_FLAGS to /MT.

We automatically add "d" to the end of MSVC_RUNTIME_FLAGS when
building a debugging executable.

If a manifest file is created when building a DLL or executable, we
automatically run mt -manifest to embed the manifest file.