I am working on quite a large project that has to compile in Debug and Release for both 32 bit and 64 bit versions. It also has to be portable. The problem is, the linking dependencies (.lib) change since I have to link with either 32 bit or 64 bit libraries. To simplify matters, I have the following kind of setup for “additional library dependencies” for linker:
$(LIB_HOME)/core/bin;…
Where LIB_HOME points to the home of the correct version of the library.
Now I currently set LIB_HOME in a batch file which then starts up visual studio 2010. With this method, unfortunately, I have to restart visual studio every time I want to switch from 32 or 64 bit. I saw the “environment” setting under the debugging options but those environment variables only seem to kick in at runtime.
Is there any way, or any tool that I can use to set build-time environment variables for visual studio 2010 so that I can easily switch between debug and release in both 32 bit and 64 bit modes and the environment variables will be set correctly? How is this problem usually dealt with?
Thanks
EDIT: I found a tool called Solution Build Environment (http://workspacewhiz.com/SolutionBuildEnvironmentReadme.html) which seems to be what I’m looking for, but unfortunately it looks like it’s not available for VS2010.
Compiler macros and strategic placement of libraries. For example, I’ll use “$(PlatformName)_$(ConfigurationName)/libraries” for my Additional Link Directories. Then I’ll put my 32-bit libs in Win32_Debug/libraries and Win32_Release/libraries, and my 64-bit libs in x64_Debug/libraries and x64_Release/libraries. You could obviously omit the _$(ConfigurationName) if you didn’t care about debug versus release.
Alternately, use 2 environmental variables, one for 32-bit and one for 64. Configure the 32-bit build configuration to use the 32-bit variable, the 64-bit build configuration to use the 64-bit variable. You are using a different build configuration for each build, right?