Can I build C++ application for Windows Embedded Systems (WinCE 6.0, WES7) with Visual Studio 2015?

Question

I would like to create an application that can be executed on a device running WinCE 6.0 or WES7 with Visual Studio 2015 using C++. Is this possible and what do I have to do to achieve this ? Which C++ language standard can I use ? C++11 ? The information I found in the web is not very precise about this.

Sometimes a read that not all Visual Studio Versions support the development for all Windows Embedded Systems available. So e.g. if it is not possible under VS 2015, I may need to use an older version and thus need to use an older version of the C++ standard for development.

Answer 1

We have applications that are C#, C++, and other languages, all running on Windows Embedded Standard 7. With the C++ applications, they were built with multiple versions of Visual Studio. In general, if it runs on Windows 7, it runs on WES7 with very few issues.

• Device drivers may/may not work on WES7. Check your hardware vendor to make sure. In many cases, the hardware vendor doesn't know or won't say, so you may have to just test it yourself. Crystal and SmartEx were very good about answering these questions for us.
• WES7 allows you to remove many parts of the OS (SMB support, the IE browser, remote desktop, and 100's of others). Removing chunks of the OS to make it more secure or reduce the OS size may affect your application. In our case, the best way to verify this was direct testing.
• Documentation and training for WES7 are very sparse. Much of the documentation is in stackoverflow and blog posts. This is great for details, but you are mostly left to your own devices for getting started.