[Gdal-dev] Visual Studio Project Files

[Mateusz Loskot]

Simon Perkins wrote:
> On Wed, 13 Sep 2006 19:18:36 +0100, "Roger James"
> 
>> Both Ben Discoe and I have done work on this. This has been 
>> mentioned on this list occasionally in the past.
>> 
>> Ben's files are available for download the "Virtual Terrain 
>> Project" site. http://vterrain.org/dist/gdal132_vc71.zip
>> 
>> I have some slightly updated versions of these files that you are 
>> welcome to have if you want them.
>> 
>> I am not sure how many people are using VS 2005 yet. But VC7.1 
>> (2003) is probably a good starting format.
> 
> I have to say that I'm personally really only interested in the VS 
> 2005 project files.

Simon,

Visual Studio 2002/2003 projects can be easily imported and
converted to VS 2005.

> VS 2005 also seems to be the point at which nmake starts to break 
> down due to manifest issues and so forth.

No, that's not true.
As I wrote in my previous response, you can easily embed manifest when
building with nmake:

http://msdn2.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ms235591.aspx

nmake is a very important and widely used tool, so you can safely expect
that it will be supported by new release of VS in future.

> One idea is to have both 2003 and 2005 project files within the GDAL
>  source tree, e.g. in gdal/visual_studio/2003 and  gdal/visual_studio/2005.

Since, GDAL uses Visual C++ compiler, I'd vote on following proposal,
differentiating compiler versions and with short dir names :-)

<gdal>\msvc70 - VC++ 2002
<gdal>\msvc71 - VC++ 2003
<gdal>\msvc80 - VC++ 2005

> An objection might be that this might pose 
> issues with keeping both sets of build files up to date, but if there
>  are going to be project files for both 2003 and 2005 floating around
>  anyway for different users, why not have them in the official source
>  tree?

I think maintenance of these files will be a hassle.
May be it would be a good idea to write a script for adding new source
code files into project files automatically:
1. Scan subproject source tree
2. Find new file
3. Add it to the .vcproj (XML file in fact)

Cheers
-- 
Mateusz Loskot
http://mateusz.loskot.net