What does the BuildMacro element do in Visual studio properties and projects?

Question

I have seen this several times:

  <PropertyGroup Label="UserMacros">
    <SomePropertyName>trunk</SomePropertyName>
  </PropertyGroup>
  <ItemGroup>
    <BuildMacro Include="SomePropertyName">
      <Value>$(SomePropertyName)</Value>
    </BuildMacro>
  </ItemGroup>

How is this different from just defining the property? To my surprise, there are only three results for this word on the MSDN, and only one is in English. The one result didn't really help me understand the construct above.

A `BuildMacro` can have `true` and be set as an actual environment variable for use by the build tools. Not sure what the other differences are vs. plain user macros. — dxiv, May 27 '21 at 04:27

score 0 · Answer 1 · answered May 27 '21 at 04:45

The BuildMacro is used to create custom user macros in property sheet. It could make you manage them in visual studio.

The steps:

Open View > Other Windows > Property Manager
Open property page under Configuration|Platform folder

What does the BuildMacro element do in Visual studio properties and projects?

1 Answers1