Visual Studio 2008 Express MFC Support

Question

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

Answer 1

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.

Answer 2

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.

Answer 3

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.

Answer 4

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.

Answer 5

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.

Answer 6

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.

Answer 7

On this website it is shown how MFC code can be compiled with the Visual Studio Express versions: link