[mathicgb] 57/393: Added notes on how I made Visual Studio Pro 2012 project files. I had to figure out more about this topic than I ever wanted to know.

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commit 935e5aa9e2200c914abed84dc05c61eae983f6ec
Author: Bjarke Hammersholt Roune <bjarkehr.code at gmail.com>
Date:   Thu Oct 11 16:28:01 2012 +0200

    Added notes on how I made Visual Studio Pro 2012 project files. I had to figure out more about this topic than I ever wanted to know.
---
 build/vs12/notes.txt | 346 +++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
 1 file changed, 346 insertions(+)

diff --git a/build/vs12/notes.txt b/build/vs12/notes.txt
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+<<<<< Notes on steps when setting up a new Visual Studio project >>>>>
+
+I did this with Visual Studio Professional 2012. I am noting the
+changes I had to do to get a project that works the way I want it
+to. You may want something else so it is not guaranteed that you can
+use this for anything.
+
+* Create an empty solution
+
+Close anything you have open in Visual Studio first. In the FILE menu,
+select "new" and then "project". Under "Other Project Types" select
+"Visual Studio Solutions". Your only option will now be "Blank
+Solution". Fill out the name of the solution and the path where it
+should go and click "OK". You now have a solution with no projects in
+it in a subdirectory with the same name as the solution.
+
+If you want the solution to not be in a directory named after the
+project, close the solution in Visual Studio and move the files in the
+directory to where you want them to go. You can now open those files
+in the new location with no issues. Once you add files with relative
+paths probably this step will be much more cumbersome, so do it now if
+you want to do it at all.
+
+* Create new projects inside your solution
+
+Right-click your solution in the Solution Explorer and click "Add" and
+then "New Project". Select the kind of project you want, name the
+project and click "OK". On the next window click "Next". You now have
+several options. I don't want to use any of the autogenerated stuff
+that Visual Studio will add to the project, so I select "Empty
+project" and deselect all other options. Then click "Finish".
+
+You will now have a project file in a subdirectory of the directory
+that the solution is in. The name of the directory is the same as the
+name of the project.
+
+* Add existing projects to your solution
+
+If the existing project you are adding has solution names or platforms
+that you wish to also add to your new projects, do not add the
+existing project to your solution until you have added all the
+solutions and platforms that you want to add to your new
+projects. Otherwise, as far as I can determine, you will not be able
+to add those configurations and platforms to the existing project
+without manually editing the project files with a text editor - Visual
+Studio will tell you that the platform and configuration is already in
+use. See http://www.dpvreony.co.uk/blog/post/v/62. If you add
+something by mistake, you can remove it, then delete the now unused
+configurations and platforms, create the platforms and configurations
+you want and then re-add the existing project. I suspect you can also
+do this by creating a new solution only for setting up a new project,
+then delete the new solution and just include the new project into the
+old solution. I feel like there must be a more reasonable way to
+handle this, though, but I don't know about it.
+
+You may have existing projects that you want to add to your
+solution. For example if you have a project that generates a DLL that
+is needed by another project in your current solution, you may want to
+add that DLL-producing project to your solution. This is especially
+true if you forsee simultaneously making changes to both the EXE
+project and the DLL project, since this way Visual Studio will take
+care of tracking the dependencies (see how to set up project
+references below).
+
+Right-click your solution in the Solution Explorer and click "Add" and
+then "Existing Project". Find the project you want to add click
+"Open". The existing project is now in your solution. The path to the
+project is relative, so if you move the solution or the project you
+either have to move them so the relative path is the same or you have
+to remove the project and re-add it.
+
+* Add source files
+
+Right click the project in the Solution Explorer and select "add" and
+then "existing item". Then you get a dialog to select the files you
+want to add to the project. You should select both the header files
+and the implementation files.  These are included using relative
+paths, so you can move things around as long as the relative path
+between the project file and the source files remains the same.
+
+If you are making a DLL project and there is an implementation file
+that defines main(), remember not to include it in your DLL project.
+
+* Properties
+
+Right click the project in the Solution Explorer and select
+"Properties".
+
+Remember that you need to set all the properties for every
+configuration of every project. You can select "All Configurations" in
+the upper left where it says "Configuration:" to make your changes
+take effect for all the configurations of the project. Remember to
+select a specific configuration for changes that are specific to that
+configurationt. If you have more than 2 configurations then you can
+also select a subset of configurations by choosing "multiple
+configurations" instead of "all configurations".
+
+You can also set a setting across several projects by opening the
+property page for one project and then shift-left-clicking other
+projects to select more than one at a time - any changes will apply to
+all the selected projects.
+
+** Configuration Properties
+
+*** General
+
+-Output Directory = $(SolutionDir)\output\$(Platform)\$(Configuration)\
+
+-Intermediate Directory =
+  $(SolutionDir)\output\$(Platform)\$(Configuration)\intermediate\$(MSBuildProjectName)\
+
+-Target Name = output file name without extension, for example "memtailor"
+
+-Target Extension = ensure this is what you want
+
+-Configuration Type = ensure this is what you want
+
+*** C/C++
+
+**** General
+
+-Additional Include Directories = set these up if you need them
+  Remember to use relative paths, not absolute!
+
+-Multi-processor Compilation = set to yes
+
+**** Proprocessor
+
+-Preprocessor Definitions = ensure this is what you want. For builds
+  with asserts on/off, define macroes that turn asserts on/off.
+
+**** Code Generation
+
+-Enable Minimal Rebuild = set to no It is required to disable this
+  setting to enable multi-processor building. I've found
+  multiprocessor building to be more useful, but you may not like it
+  in which case you should set these settings the other way around.
+
+**** Language
+-Open MP Support = change if you need it
+
+**** Precompiled Headers
+
+-Set these fields up if you want to use precompiled headers.
+
+*** Linker
+
+You will only have this tab if you are building a .exe file. Libraries
+instead have a tab called "librarian".
+
+**** General
+
+-Additional Library Directories = extra places to look for .dll and
+  .lib files.
+
+**** Input
+
+-Additional Dependencies = put in the names of libraries that you want
+  to link in, including the .lib or .dll extension. You do not need to
+  specify the outputs of other projects in the same solution - these
+  are handled using project references.
+
+* Project References
+
+Select your project, click the Project menu and select References. Add
+references to any other projects whose output DLL or LIB file you want
+to use in the output for this project. This automatically also sets up
+project dependencies so you do not need to do that.
+
+* Start-up project
+
+right-click the project in the Solution Explorer and select "set as
+start-up project".  This simply means that this project will be the
+one that is selected by default when you open the solution.
+
+
+<<<<< Extra configurations >>>>>
+
+* Release-Assert
+
+You want a version with asserts enabled that is still optimized. That
+way you do not have to sit and wait for a very slow non-optimized
+debug executable to run with asserts on in the common case that none
+of the asserts trigger and all the test pass or if you can see what
+the problem is from the assert without needing to go into the
+debugger.
+
+If you get an assert or test failure that you need to go into the
+debugger for, simply select the debug configuration and run the
+program again.
+
+** Make the new configuration
+
+If some existing project already uses the configuration you want to
+make, then it will already exist in your solution.
+
+*** If the configuration does not exist in your solution
+
+Select the configuration drop-down from the top of the screen and
+select "new" Set it to copy settings from the Release build
+configuration. Mark the "create new project configurations" tick-box.
+
+If you do not see "new" on the configuration drop-down (I don't know
+why it disappears sometimes), instead select Configuration Manager and
+select new from the drop-down in the upper left corner. This will
+create the new configuration across all your projects in the
+solution. If you only want a configuration to be available for a single
+project, instead select the configuration drop-down for that project in
+the middle part of the Configuration Manager.
+
+*** If the configuration already exists in your solution
+
+Go into the Configuration Manager, find the project you want to add
+the existing configuration to, right-click the drop-down in the
+Configuration column and click "New". After that things are the same
+as above, except you need to do this for each project.
+
+** Fix settings
+
+Go into Configuration Properties -> C/C++ -> Preprocessor ->
+Preprocessor Definitions.  Now select the Release configuration, copy
+the preprocessor settings from there (ctrl-v), go back to
+Release-Assert and paste (ctrl-c) the debug preprocessor settings
+there. You also need to go to C/C++ -> Code Generation and set Runtime
+Library to a debug setting - select whatever is selected for your
+Debug configuration. If your project links in external libraries you
+might need to select a debug version of those libraries too - do
+whatever you debug configuration does. If you can get away with not
+using external debug libraries that might be good since possibly they
+have been built with optimization turned off in which case they will
+be slow.
+
+If you have more than one project you need to fix the settings for
+each project. If you get mysterious errors about missing linker
+symbols or incompatible libraries then possibly that is because you
+forgot to do the above for one of your projects that is being depended
+upon by one of the other projects that you did remember to do this
+for.
+
+* Debug-NoAssert
+
+Sometimes you are debugging an issue that is not an assertion
+failure. In that case you may need to run some significant computation
+for a while until you get to the issue, such as a segmentation
+fault. To debug you have to compile without optimization, so this can
+be very slow and it will be even worse if you also have asserts turned
+on. So it is good to have a build that you can debug but where asserts
+are not turned on. To realize this, duplicate the debug build as above
+and defined NDEBUG or, alternatively, do not define whatever
+preprocessor macroes you've got that turn assertions on. You do this
+in C/C++ -> Preprocessor -> Preprocessor Definitions.
+
+* WarningAsError
+
+If you want to have no warnings in your build you'll want to set use
+the setting "treat warnings as errors". Unfortunately, if your code
+has many warnings, you probably want your code to still be compilable
+even though you have not fixed all the warnings yet. When needing to
+meet a deadline, you might let some warnings stand until a few days
+later. To avoid having to go through all your projects and turn "treat
+warnings as errors" on and off, you can make a new project that has
+this setting permanently turned on. Really you should have one with
+asserts and one without, though I just make a single one with asserts
+on. So I duplicate the Debug build and go into C/C++ -> General ->
+Treat Warnings as Errors and set it to "yes" for each project.
+
+
+<<<<< Specific instructions for gtest >>>>>
+
+I had to define the preprocessor macro "_VARIADIC_MAX=10" to build
+gtest in MSVC.  This step should become unnecessary in future once
+MSVC supports variadic templates.
+
+To enable test files to include gtest.h, add an additional relative include path
+to gtest/include/.
+
+I've found the easiest thing to get gtest building is to just include
+the file at gtest/src/gtest-all.cc from a file in my own test
+project. This requires an addtional relative include path for gtest/
+since that file includes all the other .cc files using a path relative
+to the base directory of gtest. This way you do not have to deal with
+outdated external Visual Studio project files or project files that do
+not have the compiler flags that you need and then you have to edit
+them anyway even if they are up to date.
+
+
+
+<<<<< Setting up 64 bit compilation >>>>>
+
+The default setting is to compile in 32 bit mode, so unless you
+changed that you have now got a 32 bit project. One of the problems
+with this is that you now can use no more than 2-3 GB of ram before
+getting an allocation failure, even if your computer has much more
+free RAM than that.
+
+If you included an existing project with a 64 bit platform build then
+that option will already exist in your solution.
+
+* If you do not have a 64 bit mode yet
+
+At the top of your screen it will say "Win32". It is the third
+drop-down in the middle if you did not move your toolbars. Click it
+and select "Configuration Manager". At the right it says "Active
+solution platform" and then "Win32". Click the drop-down that says
+"Win32" and select "<New>". Where it says "Type or select the new
+platform", select x64 and make sure "create new project platforms" is
+selected. That's it, you can now select a 64 bit mode by choosing
+between x86 and x64 in the drop-down at the top.
+
+* If you have a 64 bit mode already
+
+I don't know that you can do this directly then. The best work-around
+I've found is to remove the projects that already have 64 bit from the
+solution, then delete 64 bit, re-create it and then add the removed
+projects back into the solution.
+
+* Fixing settings
+
+Visual Studio may or may not have done this for you already. I suspect
+it does this if and only if you have not altered the preprocessor
+defines from the default values:
+
+ - change the preprocessor define WIN32 to WIN64.
+
+<<<<< Comitting files to version tracking system >>>>>
+
+You want to include these files for version tracking:
+
+  .vcxproj: Stores a MSVC project
+  .sln: Stores a MSVC solution, which contains references to a set of projects
+  .vcxproj.filters: Specifies for example that .h files go in the Header Files node
+
+These files are safe to delete (after you close the project/solution) and do not
+need to be tracked:
+
+  .suo: local settings, such as what windows you've got open
+  .sdf: browsing database of what is defined where - is autogenerated form the source
+  .opensdf: should only exist while a project/solution is open.  
+  output/: if you did what it says above, this is output files
+  intermediate/: if you did what it says above, this is intermediate files
+
+This file I'm not sure about
+
+  .vcxproj.user: supposedly only relevant to converting old MSVC projects, but I am
+    still getting it generated every time I open a new project. For that reason
+    I assume that this does not need to be tracked.

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