CODEWITHSUNDEEP
c++visual-studio-2010msbuildmsbuild-4.0
loop
loop

Reputation: 3590

How can I capture the cl.exe command line in Visual Studio 2010?

I have a project that I converted from a makefile that has a source file that expects the command line options from the compiler. For example for when the project was built with gcc if you did program --help it would spit out the gcc command line used to compile the program.

How can I do the same thing in Visual Studio, so that it spits out the cl command line used to compile the program? Basically I want to hit F7 (to build solution) and have the whole thing automated. I can't find a macro for it. Thanks

edit; I mean programatically, so for example I want when I run the program for its output to contain the cl.exe command string that is used. You can see the command line at Configuration Properties > C/C++ > Command Line > All Options but I can't find a macro for it or some way to encapsulate it in a file.

Upvotes: 2

Views: 3914

Answers (3)

Mahima Chugh
Mahima Chugh

Reputation: 41

The closest thing which I came across cl command line which msuild executes is "hacking" the rsp file used while calling cl.exe.

Using Override compiler solution, I changed ClCompile ToolExe to custom mycl.bat script and this script received an argument which was @tmp-1234xxx.rsp file. This rsp file contained whole command line except cl.exe path, something like -

rsp file

/P /DDEBUG Source.cpp

Then after making desired changes in the rsp file by calling a separate bash script which were very minor for me, I called cl.exe with contents of my rsp file. So, whenever user hits the build button, this script executes.

mycl.bat script

@echo off
SET PATH=%PATH%;/usr/bin  //to call cygwin bash
set parameter=%1
set parameter=%parameter:~1% //to remove @ in the beginning 
c:/cygwin/bin/bash process.sh %parameter%

process.sh

iconv -f UCS-2 -t UTF-8 <$1 >$1.conv  //file converted to UTF-8, else bash wasn't handling it well
contents=`cat $1.conv`
#Processing on file contents here
path/to/cl.exe $(contents)

Very nasty solution, but it worked for my use case. I wanted to change the names of the file on the go based on some logic.

The problem I faced is Visual Studio uses tlogs written by CL Task to check while file needs to to be rebuilt on incremental build and my target's tlogs files were not enough. There were tlogs of every command in batch and bash scripts but not for whole target. So, it was building whole thing on incremental builds also.

Upvotes: 0

Tom Blodget
Tom Blodget

Reputation: 20812

A .vcxproj is a Visual Studio project in the MSBuild project format. You can build it by running msbuild.exe, devenv.exe, devenv.com, using the Visual Studio GUI or the MSBuild API.

Visual Studio GUI uses the MSBuild API. In doing so, it limits the MSBuild output. If you want more details, change your user settings in Visual Studio:

Tools > Options > Project and Solutions > Build and Run > two verbosity settings

Detailed will show the cl.exe command lines.

Upvotes: 4

stijn
stijn

Reputation: 35911

Since VS switched the underlying build system to MsBuild the command line as shown in that dialog is created programatically within VS only. It might not even be the exact command line passed to cl: MsBuild itself invokes CL via a task and as such there is no direct link with what is shown in VS nor is there a way to get the command line out of it.

Anyway, there is no such thing as the command line since each source file might have different options. Furthermore I doubt you want the full commandline including the absolute include paths etc. Nobody is interested in that. Now if you make clever use of the macros from http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/b0084kay.aspx you can sort of recreate the command line yourself since most options are there:

std::string CompilerCommandLineOptions()
{
  std::string cmd;
  #ifdef _CHAR_UNSIGNED
  cmd += " /J";
  #endif
  #ifdef __cplusplus_cli
  cmd += " /clr";
  #endif
  #ifdef _CPPRTTI
  cmd += " /GR"
  #endif
  //etc
  return cmd;
}

Note: are you sure it's worth the hassle? Is there really somebody interested in the command line? It's not even sufficient to build the project. Why not the linker options as well then?

Upvotes: 3

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