Question

I am fairly new to developing C/C++ code in MSVS but one of the things that has already confused me is why, after adding a set of source and header files to my project such that they show up respectively under the MSVS folders ‘Source Files’ and ‘Header Files’, do I subsequently have to tell the compiler where my header files are under ‘Project->properties->C/C++->General’. It seems to me that MSVS should already attempt to resolve any ‘include “…”‘ statements by first looking thru the set of header files I have included in the project.

Anybody care to comment on the logic being used here?

Thanks,
Travis

Answer 1

Actually, adding your header files in the so called “Header Files” folder is optional. Even without doing the same you can just specify the header path in “Project->Properties->….” and it will still work.

You may be thinking from the perspective of only your project’s header files which can be added in the “Header Files” folder, what about a big project having several third party libraries, you definitely cannot go and keep adding each every header file into your folder.

So, to keep all the includes unified at one configuration, this way should have been selected.

All the stuff quoted above is just my understanding. I don’t have any evidence to support this. So, My apologies in advance is this is wrong. Don’t bombard me with Downvotes please. : )