Explanation of different Visual Studio 14.0\VC\Bin folders

Question

Under C:\Program Files (x86)\Microsoft Visual Studio 14.0\VC\bin, I see a number of different folders. I could not understand what some of them are for:

Specifically amd64_x86 and x86_amd64. How can you have both x86 and amd64 "together"? And what is the meaning of them in different order?

Also, can I assume that the root folder (i.e. VC\Bin\) is for x86?

(I was specifically looking for the cl.exe file.)

Answer 1

These subdirs contain cross compilers. They run on one architecture and produce code for another. Three architectures are supported, x86 (32-bit Intel/AMD), amd64 (64-bit Intel/AMD, aka x64) and arm. So:

• x86_amd64: contains a 32-bit compiler and linker that generate x64 code. Could be useful on a build server that boots a 32-bit operating system.
• amd64_x86: contains a 64-bit compiler and linker that generate x86 code. Can be useful to tackle very large source code files that make a 32-bit compiler run out of memory. Not the kind of code that a human ever writes, but not unlikely to go wrong with auto-generated code.
• x86_arm and amd64_arm: respectively a 32-bit and 64-bit compiler that generate ARM code. Note how targeting an ARM device always requires a cross-compiler. Also the reason there are no arm_x86 and arm_amd64 subdirs, your dev machine doesn't have an ARM processor.

Use the Developer Command Prompt to setup an environment to run cl.exe by hand.