Because I was recently shocked (if I may say :D) that, for building a 2003-class operating system, we need 2010+ tools, I was wondering whether it was still possible to build ReactOS with MSVC 2008 and 2005. I’ve created a task for that in Jira: http://jira.reactos.org/browse/CORE-8023 . After application of the configure.cmd patch that I give in the report, plus few tweaks in two headers (and adding some stdint.h in the correct directory for MSVC, needed for compiling host-tools, because this file is not included in default MSVC installation until MSVC 2010+), I was able to build a full bootcd and livecd (see the details in the abovementioned report, basically it currently builds with MSVC 2008 but not 2005). However there happens an interesting thing: the [boot|live]cd boots (freeldr seems to work and load the kernel and drivers), but after that, the kernel (debugged in WinDbg) hangs indefinitely here:

Windows Server 2003 Kernel Version 3790 UP Checked x86 compatible

Built by: 20140326-r62565

Machine Name:

Kernel base = 0x80400000 PsLoadedModuleList = 0x005fcf88

System Uptime: not available

(f:\ros_vs_test\ntoskrnl\ke\i386\cpu.c:494) Supported CPU features : KF_V86_VIS KF_RDTSC KF_CR4 KF_CMOV KF_GLOBAL_PAGE KF_LARGE_PAGE KF_MTRR KF_CMPXCHG8B KF_MMX KF_WORKING_PTE KF_PAT KF_FXSR KF_FAST_SYSCALL KF_XMMI KF_XMMI64 KF_NX_BIT

(f:\ros_vs_test\ntoskrnl\ke\i386\cpu.c:801) Prefetch Cache: 64 bytes L2 Cache: 0 bytes            L2 Cache Line: 64 bytes L2 Cache Associativity: 0

<_hangs_forever_here_>

If some of you have an idea what *might* happen there, I’m all ears!

Cheers,

Hermès.