How can I downgrade a C++ Visual Studio 2008 project to visual studio 2005?
Maybe there is a converter program that someone knows of or otherwise a process that I can undertake. Thanks.
I have no idea how well it works, but here's an open source converter tool:
http://sourceforge.net/projects/vspc
that was an extension to the tool outlined in this article:
http://www.codeproject.com/KB/macros/vsconvert.aspx
I always hate to edit the .sln/proj files by hand, since they can be so picky and problematic. It might be easiest to just create a new project in 2005, and just copy all the code files back into it.
You will need change the sln and vcproj files (including attributes like ToolsVersion, TargetFramework, ProductVersion etc). Some freeware may be available but I haven't heard very highly of them.
Is your solution file in revision control system? Just see what modifications the upgrading to VS 2008 did to project and solution files and then undo them. There's not a lot of them.
Here is the open source that convert VS2008 project into VS2005.
http://www.emmet-gray.com/Articles/ProjectConverter.htm
You can delete .sln file, then open .vcproj in VS2005, then save it as new solution. Since all project options are held in .vcproj file, that should do.
You can use sed to do it, with the following script or something like it:
s#Version=\"9.00\"#Version=\"8.00\"#g
s#<ProductVersion>9.0.21022</ProductVersion>#<ProductVersion>8.0.50727</ProductVersion>#g
s#<TargetFrameworkVersion>v2.0</TargetFrameworkVersion>##g
s# ToolsVersion=\"3.5\"##g
s#MSBuildToolsPath#MSBuildBinPath#g
Put that in a text file called "downgrade_vc9_to_vc8.sed", then call it with:
"C:\Program Files\GnuWin32\bin\sed.exe" -f "downgrade_sln_vc9_to_vc8.sed" "MyProject.vcproj" > "MyProject_VC8.vcproj"
Related
There has been a lot of discussion about this topic but still no concrete answer about it or atleast I can not find it. I am unable to find the option File->New->Project from existing files
I have already the source files and to avail the advantage of some tools in visual studio express I installed the trial version 2013 and even after playing with it a little bit and looking for it on internet I did not find this option.
Is there any possible way to create project with existing source files like this in 2013 version ?
or should I install some older version ?
Suggestions/comments/solutions .. Please
You could try creating a blank project and then importing the files into it. Not sure if the version you're using is able to do that. Otherwise, create a new project and new source files and copy/paste the code (it's not a great solution).
In Visual Studio Express 2013 I found I was able to export an existing project as a template then build a new project off of that template.
File -> Export Template
then
File -> New Project and the saved Template was available to choose from.
According to http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/754c3hy7.aspx "This option ( File->New->Project from existing files) is not available in Visual Studio Express editions..." so the short answer would be "no."
#JBentley - the OP asked if he could perform the task "like this", where "this" means "using File->New->Project from existing files".
Im using MS visual studio 2010 PRoofessional version , and in both languages I'm using (C++ and UnrealScript with Nfringe ) there seems to be no auto complete , also with the nfringe there is no auto indentation either .
I was wondering how to fix this?
Most probably you accidentally switched into low-impact IntelliSense mode by pressing
CTRL+ALT+SPACE Just hit CTRL+ALT+SPACE to go back to the IntelliSense mode.
Are you writing a totally unmanaged C++ dll? There is no intellisense support for CLI/C++ projects in VS 2010
I have actually problems with C++ and Intellisense since VC6...
We now use Whole Tomatoes "Visual Assist" and it repairs Intellisense. :-) This single feature is the money worth.
When you open the solution file, do you get a warning about being unable to open the IntelliSense database? If so, that's the reason—UnrealEngine intentionally has a directory with the same name as the IntelliSense database to prevent its creation (Visual Studio can't create a file if a directory of the same name already exists). The engine code base is so large that having IntelliSense enabled slows everything to a crawl when you're editing code.
I'm also using Unreal Engine, and I met the same problem before, the solution was set the dirs by myself in VS project setting.
Open the property window of ur game project(e.g UDKGame), navigate to "NMake", "Include Search Path", and fill the needed header search path there.
You may copy the path list from the output of UnrealBuildTool.
The values u set here is only used by Visual Studio's IntelliSense, so there's no need to worry about build error.
This only works for C++, I'm not sure what's wrong with Unreal Script. I just updated to Visual Studio 2010 and has not installed the new nFringe.
Hope this answer is not too late
I have a huge Visual Studio 2010 solution. I work with Visual Studio 2005, so I want to convert the solution to the desired version. Basically, it's a portable C++ code so it should compile on Visual Studio 2005 too. Changing the version in the *.sln file doesn't help because the *.vcxproj format is completely different from the old *.vcproj format.
Recreating the solution by hand is not an option because of its size. Also there may be some non-default compiler flags, dependencies, etc. that I don't know of (and I can't look through ALL this XML junk that I don't understand).
There is already a related question on How Do I Downgrade a C++ Visual Studio 2008 Project to 2005. However, the utility suggested there supports at most Visual Studio 2008.
Any suggestions?
It really totally sucks, that every proprietary IDE today thinks it needs to create its own project file format.
"Dear IDE developers, just use Makefiles and create a nice GUI for it so that also people without Makefile knowledge can use it!" In VS6 it was at least possible to import/export Makefiles, but not today anymore. And it was possible to use nmake for automated builds. No IDE needed to be installed, just the toolchain which could be grabbed by a simple checkout without installation.
I use CMake now. It's free, it's cross-platform, it is well supported in free IDEs like KDevelop, QtCreator, etc. It can generate Makefiles and Visual Studio projects.
So you maintain only one project source, the CMakeLists.txt file and can work with any IDE. No pain with different versions of Visual Studio or with other proprietary project file formats.
This way you can generate or VS projects for developing and you can generate Makefiles for commandline builds using nmake like in the good old days.
BTW, it's much easier to change settings in a CMakeLists.txt than clicking through various GUI dialogs. But this is a matter of personal preferences.
In my work made a utility which utilized the EnvDTE.dll and scanned a vcproj-file and optionally all vcproj-files within a sln-file. It compared all settings with a "template" and would issue a warning or optionally update the setting to correct values. We used this utility so that settings would be verified to be correct and consistent throughout all projects. I haven't updated the utility to 2010 yet due to other priorities.
EnvDTE hasn't changed much from Visual Studio 2008 to Visual Studio 2010. Perhaps it is possible to create a simple utility which opens the vcxproj-file using DTE100 and saves it using DTE90, or earlier.
Easiest way is probably to create a new project in VS 2005, and use the add existing item dialog to add the code to the project. I'd suggest using 'Empty Project' as the project type, so you don't have a lot of rubbish autogenerated for you that you'll just delete anyway.
I haven't tried it, but this looks promising:
http://www.emmet-gray.com/Articles/ProjectConverter.htm
edit: Nope, not promising, sorry :-(
Two somewhat unrelated questions:
Sometimes when I am working on a C++ project in Visual Studio 2008 Express, intellisense just does not want to "work" even though it really should. Auto completion box does not show and status bar says something along the lines of: "Intellisense: No further information is available".
Sometimes it can be fixed by either rebuilding the solution or re-opening the solution, and sometimes even that doesn't work. Is this a known problem? If so: are there any known fixes?
Is there any C++ IDE for Linux that has compatibility with MSVC++'s .sln files? I sometimes want to work on some project without having to go through the hassle of creating a new project and adding the files or manually creating a Make file.
edit:
To answer my own questions:
Apparently there's no real fix other than to try and delete the .ncb file. Alternative would be a different IDE or to use a commercial package replacing intellisense.
Code::Blocks seems to be able to open Visual Studio files. Or at least import them easily.
I posted these together as they both related to visual studio and I didn't deem them important enough to both deserve their own topic.
Do think the downvote is a little harsh though!
Intellisense failing is usually because of a "corrupt" ncb file. The usual solution is to delete it.
Reportly the next version VS 2010 will not be using ncb files anymore.
I've actually had some luckk opening .sln files using Monodevelop.
To avoid creating the Make files by hand try CMake
To answer your second question, there is no way to open .sln files in anything other than Visual Studio. They're a proprietary file type that (it seems) no one has any interest in writing a parser for.
You can however use Visual Studio to generate a makefile automatically. Just use the "Projects > Export Makefile" menu command in Visual Studio.
As may be known by many, the Express versions of Visual Studio 2008 don't include support for MFC and a few other packages required to compile a lot of windows programs.
So, here's my problem:
I have the full version of Visual Studio 2005. I've been using this to compile a project that a friend of mine was working on, so that I could test it out for him and continue to track bugs and things. Recently, he upgraded that project to VS 2008, which I don't have. So, I downloaded the express version in the hopes that I could simply compile with that, but no luck, it complains about headers missing left and right.
It seems to me that since I already have the full version of VS 2005, I'm bound to have at least some (perhaps older) version of the files in question that his project needs to compile against.
Is there a way I can convince VS 2008 to also look in 2005's directories for include files and library files to compile against?
Furthermore, is this a bad idea? I would really prefer not to go out and purchase VS 2008 full, as I'll never use it myself. (2005 does the job fine for me at the moment, and I tend to prefer GCC anyway.)
Thanks
You can use the VC++ compiler directly from the command line, or just create a new project w/ the source in Visual Studio 2005. Unless he is using some functionality provided in the new versions of MFC/ATL in 2008/2008sp1, you should be able to compile the project just fine.
See ("Create Project from Existing Source") in Visual Studio 2005. It is unfortunate that they don't include these libraries with the Express Editions.
Use the vcvars*.bat script(s) from Visual Studio 2005. See this blogpost from VC++ Blog to see how. You will use the old compilers, but the build system from Visual Studio 2008.
You can go into Tools>Options>Projects and Solutions>VC++ Directories
and alter the Include, Library, and Source (and Reference maybe?) folders to use VC++ 2005's folders.
I'd guess you just replace $(VCInstallDir) with a hardcoded VS 2005 path. I'd record the original values before doing this.
However, have you just tried using the OLD 2005 sln and vcproj files? Keep using 2005 on your end and 2008 on his. Keep two sets of these files for each IDE. Any issues are going to be with the library mismatch - which you're not avoiding by using 2008's tools with 2005's libraries.
The simple way to deal with this would be to revert the solution and project files back to their visual studio 2005 state from source control(you are using source control right?). At this point you can compile the project as long as your friend does not use any of the mfc 9 only functions.
The first thing I would try is loading this up in VS 2005 by just modifying the version of the .sln and the .vcproj files. In the .vcproj change the version from 9.00 to 8.00 and in the .sln change the format version from 10.00 to 9.00.
If you don't have fancy stuff in the project you have a high chance of just being able to use it like this. Also this would avoid having to update 2 project and solution files.
On this website it is shown how MFC code can be compiled with the Visual Studio Express versions:
link
Just for the record, I've done that(by modifying the include directories and library directories from inside the IDE) and it's working pretty well, I have MFC, ATL, everything.
I've found this explanation. http://www.codeproject.com/Articles/30439/How-to-compile-MFC-code-in-Visual-C-Express