I guess this thread was largely about communicating some things to Microsoft. I have an item to add to the list. I'm not sure of the terminology for this but it is supported in some of the newer versions of g++, but not in the version of VS 11 that I have. The code shown below is available here: http://webEbenezer.net/misc/direct.tar.bz2<http://webebenezer.net/misc/direct.tar.bz2>. This snippet is from cmwAmbassador.cc #ifdef ENDIAN_BIG , byteOrder(most_significant_first) #else , byteOrder(least_significant_first) #endif and this from cmwAmbassador.hh #ifdef ENDIAN_BIG ::cmw::ReceiveBufferTCPCompressed<LeastSignificantFirst> cmwBuf; #else ::cmw::ReceiveBufferTCPCompressed<SameFormat> cmwBuf; #endif uint8_t const byteOrder; I want to rewrite that as the following in the .hh file. #ifdef ENDIAN_BIG ::cmw::ReceiveBufferTCPCompressed<LeastSignificantFirst> cmwBuf; uint8_t const byteOrder = most_significant_first; #else ::cmw::ReceiveBufferTCPCompressed<SameFormat> cmwBuf; uint8_t const byteOrder = least_significant_first; #endif and be able to get rid of the ifdef in the .cc file. Microsoft: please add support for this and let me know when it is available. -- Brian Wood Ebenezer Enterprises http://webEbenezer.net <http://webebenezer.net/>