VS2015 C ++静态初始化崩溃，可能是错误

Question

I'm seeing something weird happening with Visual Studio 2015 Community. Code that worked perfectly in VS2012 crashes at startup when ported to VS2015, before main is invoked: the classic symptoms of some static initialization mess. I have a few static variables, but used properly, with the standard "Construct On First Use" pattern, eg:

const int& i()
{
  static int *v = new int(1);
  return *v;
}

The code above causes an assert from the runtime while initializing the program (see image http://i.stack.imgur.com/nsQGS.png ). Pressing retry simply quits the program: no call stack, no information whatsoever.

The code below however works flawlessly:

const int& i()
{
  static int *v = nullptr;
  if (v == nullptr)
    v = new int(1);
  return *v;
}

It seems to me that VS2015 is doing what looks like some (illegal) optimization (even in a debug build), by executing the static variable initialization code during program initialization, and not the first time that the function is called, as the C++ standard requires. I tried several variations of the code above: class methods, free functions, different objects (std::vector, cv::Mat), always with the same result: the static pointer has to be initialized to null or the program doesn't start.

So... am I missing something or is VS2015 actually messing up badly?

UPDATE:

I spent some time trying to find the minimal setup that shows the problem, and this is what I got:

1. create a project using the "CLR empty project" template.
2. add a cpp file, containing just the offending function and main(). Main can be empty, it doesn't matter: the bug occurs BEFORE it is even reached.
3. add 'main' as entry point (or you get a link error).

The x86 version works, but the x64 doesn't.

For comparison, a project with the identical code but created as "Win32 console application" doesn't have the problem, even after adding the /CLR option. I can see differences in the vcxproj files, but none justifies the error, although one or more of them clearly IS the cause.

Is there a way to upload a zip with the project?

Answer 1

Well, @bogdan got it right. My project had a mix of settings that was neither /SUBSYSTEM:CONSOLE nor /SUBSYSTEM:WINDOWS. Once I fixed that, everything started to work as expected. My test projects had the same problem, I blame Microsoft for not having a clear "CLR windows app" C++ template any more in VS2015 (they want to push you to use C# for that, which makes sense most of the times, but not always).

I found this page particularly useful in explaining all the different settings that have to be consistent (it's not just /SUBSYSTEM...).

I wish I could mark @bogdan's comment as answer, but I can't see anything to do that.

Thanks Bogdan!