Question

Suppose I have files a.cpp and b.cpp and I get warnings in a.cpp and an error in b.cpp. I fix the error in b.cpp and recompile — since Visual Studio doesn’t have to recompile a.cpp, it doesn’t remind me of the warnings it found before.

I’d like to somehow have the warnings persist; however, I don’t want it to treat warnings as errors (I’d like it to still compile/run even with warnings). Is this possible?

Answer 1

Essentially, you’re out of luck. The C++ compilation will discard all of the errors and warnings. Because it only recompiles .CPP files that have a missing .OBJ file (i.e. the ones that had errors and failed last time), you’ll only see the errors.

You have a few options. Off the top of my head:

• Write a macro that responds to the build complete event. If it sees any warnings, it could delete the .OBJ file. The .CPP file would be compiled again next time. Unfortunately, this means that your program may not run without recompilation.
• You could write a macro that works the other way: on build start, look to see if there are any warnings, and then delete the .OBJ file.
• Write a VS addin that remembers warnings until the .CPP file is compiled again.