Question

Assume a Visual C++ solution that outputs several executables. These executables are meant to be run in a certain order and with certain parameters — and for this purpose there already is an ant build.xml script.

What would be a decent approach to integrating this ant script with VC++, such that the ant script will point against the recently output executables (.\Debug and .\Release folders) and ideally could be run directly from VC++, and dare I say with remote debugging.

I was thinking of using build post-events that populate a build.properties file with the output location of each executable, and let the ant script use this .properties file.

Any help on the matter would be great.

Answer 1

I’m not sure if there is a good answer for this. Perhaps you are not asking the right questions. From C++ you can launch anything, including scripts. I’m not sure what you mean by VC++ integration.

The generic answer would be:

• save the output locations somewhere, doesn’t matter where (file, registry, environment variables etc.)
• retrieve them in the script before use

But depending on what you need, you could also try:

1. Output the same executables in the same folder structure. This way you can use relative paths.
2. Use a post-build event which copies the script in the output folder and make it use the relative path.
3. Instead of a script you can also try handling everything from the first EXE. Instead of an ANT script it could use a configuration file which specifies execution order and parameters.