Is it possible to have a custom step run per-solution, not per-project?

Question

I have a Visual C++ solution with several projects. I'd quite like to be able to add a step that is executed after I build the entire solution... e.g "copy *.lib ......\libs.

Is this even supported? VS is mainly based around individual projects, but obviously does support solution builds.

Answer 1

You can create a dummy project, set that project up to depend on all other projects and then add custom build steps to that project.

In case all you want to do is to copy the libs or similar, it is probably better to do this from the individual projects, so that you don't do extra work in case you only build one of the projects.

Answer 2

You could also make use of property sheets. Set up the post build steps in it and have all your project inherit settings from that property sheet. You can find the property manager under View->Property Manager and create property sheets from there.