What restrictions exist choosing a MFC version to use with Visual C++?

Each version of Visual Studio comes with a specific version of the MFC fra开发者_运维知识库mework, but I believe MFC SDK can be downloaded separately. Since MFC is just C++, is there any reason you couldn't use the latest version with an older version of VC++... I don't mean trying to get the ribbon working in MSVC++ 6, But we're on VS2005 and some of the newer MFC features would be useful.

I've never heard about anyone using older versions of the compiler with new MFC's. I'm not even sure it would work out of the box, think e.g. about the for loop scoping changes in the previous VS version. I'd be very surprised about MS-sanctioned descriptions of getting MFC to work with VC Express - after all if they wanted people to do that, why wouldn't they just bundle MFC with VC Express?

Besides, cherry-picking MFC components was never really possible; over time, ATL and MFC CString were merged, they probably had to make changes in the rest of MFC/ATL to make that work.

My conclusion & opinion: very unlikely this will be easy to get to work.