CODEWITHSUNDEEP
visual-studio-2005
Kevin Meredith
Kevin Meredith

Reputation: 41909

Generating VS 2005 .vcproj's by hand

I'm working on a script that generates Visual Studio 2005 C++ project files (.vcproj).

The script reads a makefile, then spits out a c++ project.

INPUT: makefile ---> OUTPUT: VS 2005 c++ project (.vcproj)

However, when I try to build the auto-generated project in VS 2005, error outputs: "Unspecified Error." Evidently, I am not generating the VS 2005 .vcproj file correctly.

Assuming that my c++ project file was malformed, I opened up VS 2005 and made a new C++ project. I actually copied the good, VS 2005-created project file to my non-working, malformed project file. I replaced the Name, Reference Includes (.libs), Compile Includes (.cc, .c), etc. in the good VS 2005 project with my malformed project file's information.

However, I still cannot get VS 2005 to compile my .vcproj. Perhaps VS 2005 is very particular about the content of its .vcproj's?

Please give me advice on how to manually generate a VS 2005 .vcproj.

Thanks!

Upvotes: 0

Views: 569

Answers (1)

Nordic Mainframe
Nordic Mainframe

Reputation: 28737

The project files are in the MSBuild format, which is a XML file format with a schema (XSD). You can verify your generated files against this schema. Follow the instructions here:

http://blogs.msdn.com/b/msbuild/archive/2005/11/04/489212.aspx

to locate the schema files and then grab your favored tool schema verification tool to validate your tool's output. A discussion about schema validation tools is here:

XML Schema (XSD) validation tool?

Upvotes: 2

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