I'm new in the world of Visual Studio. Can somebody please explain what these two files contain? I know that one of them contains info about project, but what about the other one?
A project file .vcproj / .vcxproj contains settings on how to compile your code into a DLL or a binary file, or something else that the linker can assemble into one unit. A project file is just an xml file that contains compiler settings, linker settings, and describes which files you want to compile.
A solution file *.slnis a text file that groups together multiple project files.
So if you think of it like a tree, then you have got a good mental picture of it like this:
.sln
.vcproj
.h
.h
.cpp
.cpp
.vcxproj
.h
.h
.cpp
.cpp
.csproj
.cs
Solution files and project files are in an XML format and describe the parts of your projects and their relations, configurations and so on. In fact, both of these files are simply MSBuild scripts (which are run through MSBuild when, you guessed it, building your project.)
This means they are easy to manipulate by hand if needs be (though this should be a rare case) and also allows to add custom parts to the build script, create custom build scripts for MSBuild that can include the solution file, among other things, or just simple auto-build scripts that pass the solution file (or project) to MSBuild, say, on version control check-in.
The difference between solution files and project files is that a project file holds information specific to that project, unaware of its solution (though, Visual Studio will look up the hierarchy to an extent in an attempt find the relevant solution when opening a project, if one exists); the solution file is aware of all projects that are part of that solution and references each of them (such as a directory of files, if you like, but with projects), it also contains solution-wide information / configuration, that can be applicable to all projects within the solution.
As pointed out by Hans Passant, there is an exception: files for C++ projects pre-VS2010 are not XML MSBuild files, but are instead a format documented by Microsoft on MSDN.
A .vcproj file contains information about HOW to compile source to a target (mostly, an executable). In many cases, it is crucial to have the project file for successful compilation, so do not delete it. It is compareable to a .dsp file (Visual Studio 6), a .prj file (Borland compilers), or a Makefile (Unix, GNU compilers) and contains paths and compiler/linker command-line options.
A .sln file is merely a collection of multiple .vcproj files. As Visual Studio can automatically create one if not present, there is no need to keep it for distribution or archiving. It's the successor of a .dsw file (Visual Studio 6). Its name "Solution file" is IMHO misleading.
In short: one is for solution, and the other is for project, and a solution can contain multiple projects.
Visual Studio allows multiple projects in a solution. The data what projects are in a solution is in the sln (solution) file.
Related
I've been given a Visual Studio project which has come with the following files:
myproj.def
myproj.dsp
myproj.dsw
myproj.idl
myproj.vcxproj
myproj.vcxproj.filters
After reading the Project and Solution Files Microsoft Docs it says for Projname.vcxproj:
The project file. It stores information specific to each project. (In earlier versions, this file was named Projname.vcproj or Projname.dsp.) For an example of a C++ project file (.vcxproj), see Project Files.
And this Microsoft Docs page says:
For convenience, Microsoft Visual Studio 6.0 provides a project file for each sample. This file has the DSP extension. An Allsamp.dsw workspace file is also provided in the main directory so that you can compile all the samples at once from within Visual Studio.
Does that mean that if I have the .vcxproj file, I can safely delete the .dsp and .dsw files?
Assume I do not care to ever recompile using Visual Studio 6.0 in the future.
.sln is equivalent to .dsw in VC6.0
.vcxproj is equivalent to .dsp in VC6.0
As far as I'm concerned ,if you have the .vcxproj file , you can safely delete the .dsp and .dsw files?
The only thing I could find so far were those two pages
http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-US/library/y4sy8216(v=vs.80).aspx
http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-US/library/y4sy8216(v=vs.90).aspx
Along with the respective "descriptions".
However, they are far from complete as is evidenced by the missing descriptions for elements underneath the Tool element.
So then I found the descriptions for VCProjectEngine in the VS installation folder:
C:\Program Files (x86)\Microsoft Visual Studio 8\Common7\IDE\PublicAssemblies\Microsoft.VisualStudio.VCProjectEngine.xml
but it's unclear whether the names of the object properties is a 1:1 mapping to those inside the resulting .vcproj file?
Things appear to be a little more straightforward for newer VS versions (MSBuild based), but not completely.
There are none that describe the whole project file. The thing is that many tags work by convention, many tasks can be declared and named inline by simply calling out to the task assembly.
So even though for the basic structure a XSD exists, there is none that describes every possible way a project file can be setup not can you validate the project file without loading the tasks and have them validate their own snippets.
In visual Studio 2010, I want to make all of the projects in one solution have the same configuration such as the include directory,the lib directory? I know there is a thing called property manager that can do this, but it makes other solutions have the same configuration.
Is there some ways to deal with it:Only let the projects in the same solution have the same configuration and don't affect other solutions?
What you can do is make your own .props file. If you open the .vcxproj file with a text editor, you can find some lines down the file something like this:
<Import Project="$(VCTargetsPath)\Microsoft.Cpp.Default.props" />
That imports (or includes or calls) some other .props file. Look for that file and use a text editor to open it, here it is in C:\Program Files\MSBuild\Microsoft.Cpp\v4.0. This gives you and idea of how .props files are structured.
Now, you can make your own .props file and in it set the include and lib paths like you want them (maybe set additional settings as well) and finally you have to add an <Import.../> line in your .vcxproj files manually. Don't worry, VS will not remove it, even if you make changes to the project.
Helpful web sites for .props programming:
Visual C++ Team Blog: http://blogs.msdn.com/b/vcblog/ (look around there, it's a treasure trove)
A guide to .vcxproj and .props file structure: http://blogs.msdn.com/b/visualstudio/archive/2010/05/14/a-guide-to-vcxproj-and-props-file-structure.aspx
I am new to Visual Studio Extensibility and want to make an addin/extension which shall do the following:
It should read all the files with a specific file extension (assume "*.ump").
It should process the text/code/whatever in the files.
It should create new Class/Code file with some code in it. [The code will be produced in step 2, just need to know how to do it?]
Yet, I have been racking my brains through extensibility, saw the single file generators .... and addins which go through ProjectItems and can detect the file extension,
BUT I HAVE NOT BEEN ABLE TO FIND a complete tutorial, guide or explanation as to how or what to do!!
Please help...
You don't want to read all files with a specific file extension in Visual C++ project nor standard Visual C# project. You may do that with hand-made MSBuild project (included in the solution).
In Visual C++ projects, there is a way to define custom tools. They are run as separate processes, so you can implement them in anything you want. Studio will ask you whether you want to define a tool (they are defined in special xml files; studio has dialog for editing them) when you add a file with extension unknown to it. In Visual C# projects, just manually write a MSBuild tasks and insert them into the project.
Do whatever you want. IIRC the generated files will have to be included in the project though. Well, for MSBuild, just tweak the project to your heart's desire, but in Visual C++ they have to.
You can combine MSBuild (csproj,vbproj) and VisualC++ projects in a single solution, so I recommend using separate.
If you ever find out you need to compile for different target where you can't use Visual Studio, you'll be glad that you have stand-alone tool you were just calling from Studio and not something that embeds in it.
We're using Jon Skeet's proto-csharp-port, and I'm running into some difficulties when mixing it with ReSharper in Visual Studio 2010.
We generate the .cs files via a custom MSBuild target, hooked up as follows:
<Target Name="BeforeBuild" DependsOnTargets="CompileProtos" />
The CompileProtos target runs ProtoGen and then adds the generated .cs files to the #(Compile) item group, by using CreateItem. This looks in a defined directory and compiles every .proto file it finds, so they're not listed in the project.
Where it falls down is that ReSharper doesn't recognise the content of the .cs files (because they're not in the project and might not exist yet), so I can't get the solution analysis light to go green.
If I add the .cs files to the project, then I get a build failure, because the .cs file has been added to the Compile item group twice.
I know that Marc's protobuf-net has Visual Studio 2008 goodness in it, and I'm looking for something similar, but for Jon's protobuf-csharp-port and for Visual Studio 2010.
Ideally, I'd like to be able to add the .proto files to the project, have them built correctly, and have Visual Studio and ReSharper know about the generated .cs files, so that IntelliSense and solution analysis work properly.
I'm guessing that something like how .xsd files can implicitly generate .cs files would do the trick.
I've attempted to get this working by implementing a custom tool for code generation, but I've run into a seemingly insurmountable hurdle:
protoc takes a directory full of .proto files and generates a .protobin file. This is then fed to ProtoGen which spits out a .cs file for each protocol definition. Unfortunately, it appears that the .protobin file needs to contain all of the definitions, otherwise you get Error: Unable to resolve all dependencies.
Since the custom tool model in Visual Studio assumes a single input file and a single output file (i.e. foo.proto -> foo.cs), it doesn't look like this can be made to work.
At least, not without finding some way to include all of foo.proto's imported .proto files in foo.protobin, anyway.
I solved it by removing the CreateItem from the CompileProtos target, and by defining it as a proper ItemGroup:
<ItemGroup>
<Protocols Include="$(ProtocolsPath)\*.proto"/>
</ItemGroup>
<ItemGroup>
<Compile Include="#(Protocols -> '%(Filename).cs')"/>
</ItemGroup>
This means that Visual Studio (and ReSharper) pick up the .cs files correctly, once they've been built, and ReSharper's full solution analysis stops complaining.
Unfortunately, Visual Studio has a habit of expanding the ItemGroup into individual Compile entries, but I can check for that before checking anything in.