I have recently switched my IDE to Visual Studio 2019 for C++ projects. I easily followed a tutorial into setting up a new library like SFML into visual studio, and tell it where the additional include and library directories are.
But there is something else that is required for it to work, which are the .dll files. Every page I followed, even the Documentation by the SFML website, it says that they have to be in the same directory as my project. That means I need to copy-paste the 7-8 files into my project directory. This really makes the folder look untidy. I would like to create a new folder and tell Visual Studio where those files are. I tried going doing this
Project -> Properties -> Linker -> Input -> Additional dependencies
Usually, the lines that would work are
sfml-system-d.lib
sfml-window-d.lib
...
I tried doing $(ProjectDir)valid path\ sfml-files.lib but this gives me the linker error, saying that It could not find the file.
If I simply move the .dlls into a folder without doing anything, the code would compile and link fine. But when it runs, Windows gives me a pop-up box with the same error message.
Here is how it currently looks
Looks really messy, I just want to be able to move them into dependencies like how src contains the source files.
How can I achieve this?
As it is now, it works perfectly fine. The issue only occurs when I try to create a new folder.
I hope I have covered the important information required for a good answer, If not please let me know what more I should add
Microsoft Visual Studio 2019
Currently running 64-bit platform with Debug configuration. Hence the -d suffix
You could create a path environment for your specified directory, which is like drescherjm’s suggestion. The steps:
Right-click “This PC” -> “Properties”-> “Advance System settings”
Click “Environment Variables”
In the System Variables group, edit “Path”
Add your directory, for example: ”D:\ SFML-2.5.1\bin”
Restart your visual studio and re-open your project
The easier solution might be to put them in the x64 subdirectory. This allows you to have various builds side by side (x86/x64, debug/release).
Since this x64 directory is where the EXE is located, it is the first directory searched for DLL's. It will take precedence over the Path solution suggested in the other answer. The Path directories are searched last of all.
I have been working on a project for a while now (C++), in Visual Studio 2019, but I've suddenly run into several problems that send me in circles between them.
I loaded it one morning, and found that it couldn't load any of the files.
So thinking I must have accidentally moved files or something, I just copied my files again from my Github repository, but then it started having problems with every include file for the headers.
Manager.h is in a different folder in the project, which makes this more confusing to me because if the source files can't open a header file in the same solution, the headers should have problems opening a different header in a different part of the project.
I've tried deleting the project settings and reloading it, but VS won't reload them, and Github desktop is freaking out with any action with the project.
Cloning my repository again and loading that just sends me back to the first problem...
Anyone have any other ideas for what I can do?
Check to see if the files are in the folder present in the error message. If they are that can be a problem with the config files of the project/solution.
Possible solutions:
Since you have the project in the repository, a quick way to solve it would be to delete your local project and clone the repository project. (Or clone it to a different location)
You can try to repace the <Subscriber.h> by "Subscriber.h".
Create a new empty project and add all the project files through the Solution explorer:
right-click on the folder where you want to add the project (I recommend Source for the .cpp and Headers for the .h);
Select Add -> Existing item -> select the files.
For example: I'm making an SFML game and I want to store my project on GitHub so my team members can have access to it. Since its made in Visual Studio does that mean I need to include: Solution file and .vcxproj file?
Also, I've seen projects on GitHub have a "src" folder to organize their repository, since mine was created in Visual Studio does that mean I need to rename my folder that is named after my project to "src" and reupload it? Or are people doing some sort of organization trick I'm missing?
Since the game is SFML, all my binaries (.dll) files are just thrown into my main folder of the project, I'd much prefer to throw them all into their respective folder, but if someone downloads my project does that mean they need to pull it out of that folder and throw it into the project file? (That way visual studio can find them)
TLDR: I'm having trouble organizing my GitHub repo with a Visual Studio C++ Project.
Since its made in Visual Studio does that mean I need to include:
Solution file and .vcxproj file?
Yes, you'll need to include solution and project files. You can see which files you can ignore at gitignore.io. Or, you can use cmake.
I'd much prefer to throw them all into their respective folder, but if
someone downloads my project does that mean they need to pull it out
of that folder and throw it into the project file?
Yes, each collaborator will have to download libraries and make it available to project on their end. And if you have lots of libraries and libraries depending on other libraries, updating them can be painful.
I use cmake and vcpkg. It isn't as straight forward as keeping libraries in project folder but requires reasonable effort for keeping project organized and clean. I'll recommend this approach.
I have used visual studio 2010 express for a while and have played with some extensive projects for quite some time. Since i'm nearing 50-60 files and thousands of lines of code, i've decided to do some source control for everything so that the project is more easily updated and accessible between all my devices, while also being back up.
I have used git before and am comfortable with it, but now when i made the commit and pushed it to a remote repository on bitbucket.org, i found that the .vcxproj files, while still retaining their correct file structure, also retained the include and lib directories for the device it was pushed from, meaning that when pulled down to another computer, those include/lib directories would be looking in the wrong directories, meaning i have to revise all of them every time i pull/push.
My question, Is there anyway i can push files to the repository such that the solution keeps the folder setup, but not the include and lib directory settings?
Edit:
After some research, i went looking into these so called property sheets in visual studio which are files that can be added to your project. The settings you set their take precedence over the settings of the project, but then the snag there is, if you add the individual property file to the project and then push the the .sln file, and the various .vcxproj files without that .props file, and then someone else clones from the repository, it won't open because it apparently requires that props file.
What i would like along these lines is a default .props file in the remote repository that, when cloned over, is no longer tracked, and then that user can just edit it for themselves. I don't know enough about git thought to make this happen. Does anybody have an idea?
I'm not sure what your problem is exactly, but here's my understanding:
Your project files contain absolute paths (e.g. "C:\myproj\include"). Replace these with relative paths (e.g. ".\include"). The "$(SolutionDir)" variable helps: if your solution file is C:\myproj\myproj.sln, then "$(SolutionDir)include" is the same as "C:\myproj\include". You can change the include and library directories in Project Properties > Configuration Properties > C/C++ and Linker, respectively.
Your project requires third party libaries - such as boost - and these are outside your project, say C:\boost. Unfortunately Windows/VS doesn't have a standard location for third party libraries, so you can either:
Include the library in your project. This is perfectly fine for small libraries, but it's not something you'd want to do with something like boost, which is both big and tends to be used widely.
Mandate that all devices set up these libraries in the same location, e.g. C:\sdk
Use an environment variable, like $(SDK_DIR) in the project, and all devices must set this environment variable.
Let me know if this helps.
What you're after are git's smudge and clean filters. You'll have to write a script for the cleaning, but sed'll probably do the job just fine, you won't need real xml parsing.
I created an empty 'Demo' project in Visual Studio 2008 and added some existing projects to my solution. Included "MyHeader.h" (other project's header) in main.cpp file which is in 'Demo'. Also added header files' path in "Tools/Option/VC++ Directories/Include files" section. But intellisense says: "File MyHeader.h not found in current source file's directory or in build system paths..."
How the problem can be fixed?
Delete the .sdf file that is in your solution directory. It's just the Intellisense database, and Visual Studio will recreate it the next time you open that solution. This db can get corrupted and cause the IDE to not be able to find things, and since the compiler generates this information for itself on the fly, it wouldn't be affected.
If you choose Project and then All Files in the menu, all files should be displayed in the Solution Explorer that are physically in your project map, but not (yet) included in your project. If you right click on the file you want to add in the Solution Explorer, you can include it.
This happened to me just now, after shutting down and restarting the computer. Eventually I realised that the architecture had somehow been changed to ARM from x64.
In Visual Studio 2019 in my case I copied a header file into the project directory, just near the other files. Intellisense could see it, but the build failed. Fair enough, it wasn't actually added to the project. I added it as existing item but this is the point that Visual Studio still didn't account for it.
Solution:
Close the project.
Delete the .vs directory.
Reopen the project.
Now Visual Studio recreates the directory with everything in it and it can now see the included file.
If it is the case that only the IDE indicates that it cannot find included files, but compiling is successful, the issue is simply that IntelliSense is not fully up to date with recent changes. This can happen specifically when including existing projects, in my own experience.
Deleting the .sdf file (= IntelliSense database) that is generated in your solution directory forces Visual Studio to regenerate it, so that it is up to date again. Just doing a "clean" will probably do the same thing, but takes more time since everything will be generated again then.
I know this is an older question, but none of the above answers worked for me. In my case, the issue turned out to be that I had absolute include paths but without drive letters. Compilation was fine, but Visual Studio couldn't find an include file when I right-clicked and tried to open it. Adding the drive letters to my include paths corrected the problem.
I would never recommend hard-coding drive letters in any aspect of your project files; either use relative paths, macros, environment variables, or some mix of the tree for any permanent situation. However, in this case, I'm working in some temporary projects where absolute paths were necessary in the short term. Not being able to right-click to open the files was extremely frustrating, and hopefully this will help others.
Had the same problem. Double check if you added the include files to Debug or Release Version of your project. If you only added it for one of them and compile for the other VS will just play dumb and not find them.
Try adding the header file to your project's files. (right click on project -> add existing file).
In my experience, with VS2010, when include files can't be found at compile time, doing a clean, then build usually fixes the problem. It's not that rare for the editor to be able to open an include file and then the compiler to announce that it can't find that very file, even when it is open on the screen!
If the visual studio says that you miss some file in the current source file folder, there is one solution that i used. Just right click the file you want to add and choose Open Document, if it really doesn't exist, then you should see something like cannot find file in the source file path = "somewhere in your computer", then what you could do is the add your source file into that path first and see if it works.
I had this issue after upgrading to Visual Studio 2019 from 2015. It would compile the project fine but Intellisense and the IDE couldn't find any header files.
The project only had valid configuration for Win32/Debug. Include paths were not setup correctly for other environments. Even though Visual Studio displayed the current environment as Win32/Debug, Intellisense must have been using something else.
Changing the current environment to x64/Release, and then back to Win32/Debug fixed it.
In Visual Studio, click on Project > Rescan Solution as shown below to rebuild the project database.
Here's how I solved this problem.
Go to Project --> Show All Files.
Right click all the files in Solutions Explorer and Click on Include in Project in all the files you want to include.
Done :)
I encountered this issue, but the solutions provided didn't directly help me, so I'm sharing how I got myself into a similar situation and temporarily resolved it.
I created a new project within an existing solution and copy & pasted the Header and CPP file from another project within that solution that I needed to include in my new project through the IDE. Intellisense displayed an error suggesting it could not resolve the reference to the header file and compiling the code failed with the same error too.
After reading the posts here, I checked the project folder with Windows File Explorer and only the main.cpp file was found. For some reason, my copy and paste of the header file and CPP file were just a reference? (I assume) and did not physically copy the file into the new project file.
I deleted the files from the Project view within Visual Studio and I used File Explorer to copy the files that I needed to the project folder/directory. I then referenced the other solutions posted here to "include files in project" by showing all files and this resolved the problem.
It boiled down to the files not being physically in the Project folder/directory even though they were shown correctly within the IDE.
Please Note I understand duplicating code is not best practice and my situation is purely a learning/hobby project. It's probably in my best interest and anyone else who ended up in a similar situation to use the IDE/project/Solution setup correctly when reusing code from other projects - I'm still learning and I'll figure this out one day!
If some soul has scrolled down to this bottom, what worked for me was disabling the Disable Database option i.e. set it to False under Tools|Options|Text Editor|C/C++|Advanced. For some reason, it was set to True for me.
As per docs, if it's set to True
All use of the code browsing database (SDF), all other
Browsing/Navigation options, and all IntelliSense features except for
#include Auto Complete are disabled.
None of the solutions worked for me. Here is what was the issue for me:
(Note discrepancy in build configuration and VC++ Directories (x86 vs x64)
To fix, just changed the build configuration to 'x86':