I have recently started evaluating two freely available C++ compilers for the Win32 platform: Digital Mars C++ and Watcom C++. Both compilers were only recently revived after a few years of no development and they therefore still lack a bit behind with the latest C++ language features.
Here are some quick&dirty C++ language conformance tests comparing these compilers (using the default settings).
| C++ Language Feature / Test Case | Digital Mars C++ 8.45 | Open Watcom C++ 1.6 | Microsoft Visual C++ 7.1 | Microsoft Visual C++ 2005 | Turbo C++ Explorer | MinGW C/C++ 3.2.3 |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| digraph punctuation tokens | PASS | FAIL | FAIL | FAIL | PASS | PASS |
| alternative tokens | PASS | PASS | FAIL | FAIL | FAIL | PASS |
| new style casts | PASS | PASS | PASS | PASS | PASS | PASS |
| bool type | PASS | PASS | PASS | PASS | PASS | PASS |
| bool conditions | PASS | PASS | PASS | PASS | PASS | PASS |
| mutable keyword | PASS | PASS | PASS | PASS | PASS | PASS |
| explicit keyword | PASS | PASS | PASS | PASS | PASS | PASS |
| typename keyword | PASS | FAIL | PASS | PASS | PASS | PASS |
| covariant return types | PASS | PASS | PASS | PASS | PASS | PASS |
| arrow operator return type | PASS | PASS | PASS | PASS | FAIL | PASS |
| overloading enums | PASS | PASS | PASS | PASS | FAIL | PASS |
| nested class forward declaration | PASS | FAIL | PASS | PASS | PASS | PASS |
| friend declaration of class in another namespace | PASS | PASS | PASS | PASS | PASS | PASS |
| class name injection | PASS | PASS | PASS | PASS | FAIL | PASS |
| friend name injection | FAIL | FAIL | PASS | PASS | FAIL | FAIL |
| static const integral members | PASS | PASS | PASS | PASS | PASS | PASS |
| delete const object | PASS | PASS | PASS | PASS | PASS | PASS |
| returning void | PASS | PASS | FAIL | FAIL | PASS | PASS |
| new scoping rules | PASS | PASS | PASS | PASS | PASS | PASS |
| if statement condition | PASS | PASS | PASS | PASS | PASS | PASS |
| switch statement condition | PASS | PASS | FAIL | PASS | PASS | PASS |
| while statement condition | PASS | FAIL | PASS | PASS | FAIL | PASS |
| for statement condition | PASS | FAIL | FAIL | FAIL | PASS | PASS |
| default argument scope | FAIL | FAIL | PASS | PASS | FAIL | PASS |
| namespaced enum | PASS | PASS | PASS | PASS | PASS | PASS |
| namespaced template | PASS | PASS | PASS | PASS | PASS | PASS |
| namespaced template function | PASS | PASS | PASS | PASS | PASS | PASS |
| using namespaced template | PASS | PASS | PASS | PASS | PASS | PASS |
| non-type template parameter | PASS | PASS | PASS | PASS | PASS | PASS |
| explicit template instantiation | PASS | PASS | PASS | PASS | PASS | PASS |
| default template parameters | PASS | PASS | PASS | PASS | PASS | PASS |
| template with default dependent parameter | PASS | PASS | PASS | PASS | PASS | PASS |
| template template arguments | PASS | FAIL | PASS | PASS | PASS | PASS |
| explicit qualification of template function | PASS | FAIL | PASS | PASS | PASS | PASS |
| new template specialization syntax | PASS | PASS | PASS | PASS | PASS | PASS |
| partial template specialization | PASS | PASS | PASS | PASS | PASS | PASS |
| partial ordering of class template partial specializations | PASS | PASS | PASS | PASS | PASS | PASS |
| member template class | PASS | FAIL | PASS | PASS | PASS | PASS |
| member template function | PASS | FAIL | PASS | PASS | PASS | PASS |
| new throws std::bad_alloc | FAIL | FAIL | PASS | PASS | PASS | PASS |
| typeid throws std::bad_typeid | FAIL | PASS | PASS | PASS | PASS | PASS |
| throwing destructor | PASS | FAIL | PASS | PASS | PASS | FAIL |
| Koenig lookup | PASS | FAIL | PASS | PASS | PASS | PASS |
| two phase name lookup | PASS | FAIL | FAIL | FAIL | FAIL | PASS |
| Quality of Implementation Issues | ||||||
| empty base class optimization | PASS | PASS | PASS | PASS | FAIL | PASS |
| return value optimization | PASS | PASS | FAIL | PASS | FAIL | PASS |
| C++0x Extensions | ||||||
| static assertions | FAIL | PASS | FAIL | FAIL | FAIL | FAIL |
| right angle brackets | FAIL | PASS | FAIL | PASS | FAIL | FAIL |
| C99 Extensions (C++ Compiler) | ||||||
| predefined __func__ identifier | PASS | PASS | FAIL | FAIL | FAIL | PASS |
| hexadecimal floating-point literals | PASS | FAIL | FAIL | FAIL | PASS | PASS |
| long long type | PASS | PASS | PASS | PASS | PASS | PASS |
| restrict keyword | FAIL | FAIL | FAIL | FAIL | FAIL | FAIL |
| variable length array | PASS | FAIL | FAIL | FAIL | FAIL | PASS |
| dynamic sizeof evaluation | PASS | FAIL | FAIL | FAIL | FAIL | PASS |
| empty macro arguments | PASS | PASS | PASS | PASS | PASS | PASS |
| enum declaration with trailing comma | PASS | PASS | PASS | PASS | PASS | PASS |
| flexible array member | PASS | PASS | PASS | PASS | PASS | PASS |
| compound literals | FAIL | FAIL | FAIL | FAIL | FAIL | PASS |
There is also a page describing how to use Microsoft's latest (Platform) SDK and STLport-4.5 with Digital Mars C++.
