Microsoft Visual C++ Express is available for free, but doesn’t come with an up-to-date version of ATL meaning that using it to build PN (which depends on WTL/ATL) has been impossible until very recently.
Baryon Lee has posted an article on CodeProject explaining how to get the latest WTL working with Visual C++ Express. This means you can now build PN2 using all free tools!
I wonder if it is possible using free, non-Microsoft environments and compilers (e.g. Dev-C++, GCC). How about the Microsoft Visual C++ Toolkit 2003? (Disclaimer: I haven’t written even a line of C++, but if I did, I would use free tools)
i don’t think PN can be compiled with DevC++, as PN uses WTL (and ATL), and these framework depend heavily on Visual C++ compiler.