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I'm frustrated by the lack of flexibility in the Visual Studio project/solution, but I realized that now that it uses MSBUILD it might be quite powerful but just doesn't expose that to the IDE. So I took a look at MSBUILD docs and don't know where to start! I wish there was a Nutshell book for that. Is there any good tutorial someone could point me to?

More specifically, here is the kinds of things I want to do:

Run a utility pre-processor to generate .CPP and .H files, which are then used by a regular C++ project. There are multiple inputs (to figure dependencies of; specifically should know if a normal .h file it uses has changed) and multiple outputs (at least one .cpp and one .h file) that are used as files in another project.

FWIW, the most complex case involves using Qt in a "normal" C++ project that can be built using VS Express 2010 or MSBUILD directly from a script on a server. Since that is a common library, there might be some guides or whatever to help? Note that a VS plug-in is not useful for the building stage, but could be used to initially generate project files that then rely only on MSBUILD and stuff included with the source code.

Would somebody please point me in the right direction?

--John

It gets worse from there, but that's my first goal.

JDługosz
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  • Visual Studio Projects are in MsBuild script format, and Visual Studio Solutions are converted to MsBuild script format at build time (SET MSBUILDEMITSOLUTION=1 prior to running msBuild against a .SLN), so learning MsBuild would be advantageous. I'd suggest preprocessing your VC++ project with this: msbuild.exe MyProject.vcxproj >ppout.xml Open ppout.xml, then identify and inspect the .targets and .props files that are included into the project during build time and see if you can get a feel for what is going on behind the scenes. – Nicodemeus Aug 26 '14 at 21:28
  • Learning MsBuild is exactly what I'm trying to do. Information is scarce: I get basics of task/item/target, but nothing on the overall logic loop it does to impart meaning to these declarations, and the .targets stuff is a quagmire. – JDługosz Aug 28 '14 at 03:12
  • You'll want to start on the Microsoft site and go from there. Digging into an existing build system without that knowledge is a great way to frustrate yourself and reinvent the wheel :) – Nicodemeus Aug 28 '14 at 17:52
  • I'd say start with something like this: http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/dd393573.aspx – Nicodemeus Aug 28 '14 at 17:52

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I found the kind of information I was looking for in a book MSBuild Trickery: 99 Ways to Bend the Build Engine to Your Will by Brian Kretzler.

In the first 18 pages I found a few key pieces of information that, along with the on-line documentations I've already gone through, helps clear things up enough to try tackling my project. Details of interest include the processing order of how MSBuild reads and operates on the things in the file, quick points on when wildcard in items are expanded and how to handle generated files, and how to see what's happening in some practical cases or even step in the debugger.

FWIW, I managed to attack my problem without using the murky ".targets"/rules files that I have yet to understand, but only using better documented/exampled features (in particular, a Target that has wildcard items doesn't care that the file name extension is not in any ".target"; is simple enough to copy from example and allows the files to be seen in the IDE Project and added to the list using the IDE; again, the FileExtension there just works OK.)

JDługosz
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