Create Software Distribution Packages From Visual Studio

Question

I would like to setup an automatic software distribution process, preferably from Microsoft Visual Studio, which builds my projects in all the different configurations and platforms, and packages all the created objects in a predefined folder tree structure.

The software distribution packages would be for Windows libraries and WDM driver projects written in C/C++. Each library has several different configurations (i.e. Windows 7 Release, Windows XP Release, MT/MD runtime compilation flags) for different platforms (i.e. x86 and x64). A similar thing is with the drivers. Without any automatic process to create a software distribution package, it's necessary to build all the different configurations for each platform and then copy the created objects to a predefined folder structure and then zip the created folder giving it a release name and version. This process is quite time consuming and error prone. Therefore, my goal is to automate this process using a clean a nice solution.

I've been researching about this for a few weeks already and have actually implemented a few different solutions. However non of the solutions I implemented until now is flawless whatsoever. Hence since this should be a problem that I guess many developers have already encountered, I would like to hear different opinions on what would be a nice and efficient way to do it.

Up until now I've tried the following:

• A batch script and a Makefile to be used by NMAKE. This is not so good because it makes difficult to set the same build parameters that are set on the visual studio project.
• Implemented a "deploy" target task (editing the .vcsproj files) which calls MSBuild of the project for each configuration/platform and copies the generated files to a distribution directory. This has the advantage that I can start the deploy activity from within visual studio but it also produces several environment variables problems, specially when building windows drivers.

Any ideas or suggested solutions will be appreciated.

Thanks in advance.

Zion

Answer 1

1. If you haven't already, add a post-build step for each lib and driver which copies the built files into your specific tree and also zips them.

2. If you haven't already, create one Visual Studio solution (.sln file) which builds all these projects at once.

3. If you haven't already, set up Build configuration using the Build | Configuration Manager dialog. Now from the IDE, you should be able to specify a specific configuration and do a Build | Rebuild Solution and make sure all the projects are successfully built.

4. From the command-line, you can now automate #3 by opening a Visual Studio command line prompt (which sets up the environment variables appropriately). Start devenv.exe with appropriate command-line parameters.