VCBuild vs. C++ MSBuild on the Command Line

re: VCBuild vs. C++ MSBuild on the Command Line

Felix Huang — Fri, 29 Jan 2010 00:15:36 GMT

"Team editions are licensed according to the Microsoft Developer Tools licensing model, which licenses products on a per user basis and each licensed user may install and use the software as many times as they wish on their devices. However, a license for each product is required for each user who uses it on those devices. "

http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?FamilyId=CE194742-A6E8-4126-AA30-5C4E969AF2A3&displaylang=en

Please direct further licensing question to http://www.microsoft.com/licensing/ .

Michael Price, you are correct that MSBuild doesn't require Visual Studio. However, the project file doesn't contain all the build behavior. It imports a set of files that is installed via Visual Studio. You can find the *.targets and *.props in %programfiles%\msbuild\microsoft.cpp\v4.0\

The VS2010 compiler and the IDE/Build doesn't place any limitation on libraries or headers. So in theory, you could get any libraries to work. Granted, some setting may be already set with certain VS versions.

re: VCBuild vs. C++ MSBuild on the Command Line

Michael Price — Thu, 28 Jan 2010 15:41:26 GMT

The Express edition of the IDE does not support MFC. I'm not sure if that is a limitation of the C++ compiler or the IDE though.

My understanding is that msbuild.exe does not require Visual Studio to be installed on the system. This however says little about licensing restrictions.

re: VCBuild vs. C++ MSBuild on the Command Line

Felix Huang — Mon, 25 Jan 2010 21:03:18 GMT

I can't comment on the license, but I can say that VC Express and WinSDK has been free for serveral years. Both of those are capable for building vcproj.

re: VCBuild vs. C++ MSBuild on the Command Line

Etienne — Fri, 22 Jan 2010 16:16:01 GMT

Does-it mean that we will be able to compile VC++ projects in a build environment without using devenv and therefore not sacrifice a precious license?

re: VCBuild vs. C++ MSBuild on the Command Line

Felix Huang — Thu, 21 Jan 2010 00:11:40 GMT

VS2010 will ship with the ability to re-target VS2008. It re-targets by changing the path and environment variables of tools, libraries, and headers. In theory, you could write a props to re-target 2005 and older toolset. Keep in mind that some tools and switches may not exist at the time, so re-targeting may get harder with older toolset.

There are two ways of affecting project build without modifying the project, msbuild argument (/p:platoformtoolset=v90 ) and environment variable.

re: VCBuild vs. C++ MSBuild on the Command Line

Ganesh — Tue, 19 Jan 2010 15:10:04 GMT

is this possible??

</PropertyGroup>

to build the project against VC++ 6 and corrosponding libraries (inlucding PSDK Jan 2002)?

re: VCBuild vs. C++ MSBuild on the Command Line

Ganesh — Tue, 19 Jan 2010 15:04:37 GMT

How could i use VS2010 IDE and newer build system to build my old VS6 project with older libraries. I read little bit about toolsets in project properties pages that allows to do this with VS2005. but not sure if this is possible for VS6

re: VCBuild vs. C++ MSBuild on the Command Line

Eugene Dziekan — Sat, 16 Jan 2010 21:01:26 GMT

I have no idea what you are talking about!

re: VCBuild vs. C++ MSBuild on the Command Line

jalf — Wed, 13 Jan 2010 22:00:46 GMT

@Gabest: Considering that Explorer is more than wonky enough already, the *last* thing I'd want is more plugins for it. It already crashes or hangs or eats 80% CPU if you even look at it funny.

Especially as neither the VS team or Explorer ever really seem to have got the hang of the whole "asynchronous" thing, initiating potentially CPU-intensive actions (such as building a solution) from a shell plugin seems like a really painful idea.

Yeah I know, call me cynical... ;)

re: VCBuild vs. C++ MSBuild on the Command Line

Felix Huang — Wed, 13 Jan 2010 19:24:35 GMT

It is not a bad idea, but probably not right to add into Visual Studio as some may see it as a distraction. A better place too add this is in codeplace as a 3rd party extension.