What is the difference between a "Win32 Project", "CLR Empty Project", and "Empty Project" templates in Visual Studio?

Question

I've just recently started working with Visual Studio this summer, primarily on CUDA and OpenCV related projects. Prior to this, I had been doing my development on Linux for CUDA using Makefiles and the common.mk makefile from NVIDIA.

So my question is as follows: I've not been able to figure out for the life of me what the difference between some of the different project templates are. I know that I've had to use "Empty Project" from the general tab of the Visual C++ options, but that's more trial and error, rather than actually knowing what is going on...

Answer 1

A Win32 project is used if you want to end up with a DLL or a Win32 application usually using the bare WinAPI. A CLR project is used to create C++/CLI project, i.e. to use C++/CLI to target the .NET platform.

The main difference between projects is what Visual Studio comes up with in terms of pre-created files. A windowed Win32 application for example (what you get when you choose Win32 project, but not a DLL) is created with a file for resources (menus, acceleators, icons etc.) and some default code to create and register a window class and to instantiate this window.