Question

I am quite used to Linux development and Makefiles, and started using (Windows and) Visual Studio not so long ago.

What I want to do is (I think) quite simple, but I can’t seem to find how to do it using Visual Studio.

I have to write an application, which I can divide into several independent sub-parts. I want to work incrementally, and create several projects that together with a main file will end up with my full project.

What I basically want is to be able to write a small project, have a main for it so that I can fully test it, and use it as a dependency for the next project. In this case, the smaller main would be deactivated (or I can comment it), and I would just change the startup project.
If I find a bug in a subset while writing my bigger software, I could just change the startup project and solve it at a smaller scale.

Well, that’s what I do all day long in Python and Java.

I tried to create new projects into my project, but I always end up having linking problems, where my main projects knows about the files in the sub projects, but not the smaller ones, etc. . .

So, is there a guide somewhere I can find to work this way ?

Thank you

Answer 1

Thanks to Vaibhav, I was able to find a solution:

I had to :

• change subproject type to lib instead of exe
• Add the subprojects as project dependencies in the main project (this just sets the build order)
• Comment out the main of my subprojects, to keep only one active.
• Add each subproject include directory in the include repos of the main project, so that the compiler can find the header files
• Add the general directory as a dependency for the linker (in this case, it is not the debug/release folder of the subprojects, but the output directory of the complete project).
• Add the names of the lib files of the subprojects in additional dependencies of the linker of the main project.

To make it simple, the project dependencies capability of VS2010 just changes the order in which the projects are built. . . I miss Eclipse.

If I find a bug and want to test on of the subprojects, I have to :

• change the startup project to be the subproject I want to change.
• uncomment the corresponding main
• change the project type to be exe instead of lib to be able to compile it.

Debug, and do everything back again to continue working on my main project.
Quite boring, don’t you think ?