What is the format of a Borland 5.0 project file?

Question

I have an old Borland project which I would like to port to VS2008. Is there any way to dump, in a human readable format, the source file, compile options and dependency information from a .ide file? I'd like something a bit more comprehensive than the 'Generate Makefile' option.

Answer 1

I don't know about Borland 5, 6 or latest compilers (latest version I've used is Borland C++ 3.1 back in 1994/95 ...), but if you have the chance to generate a Makefile maybe the best solution is to use that Borland makefile to write a NMAKE compatible makefile by hand, if it's not too large.

Another option is to manually import the header, source files and edit the project (compatibilize source and compilation settings) until the build is successful. I think this can be achieved in a short time.

To what dependencies is your project tied to? VCL? MFC? Just standard libs?

Answer 2

If this is a VCL app, options and settings are the least of your concerns, since the VCL API is completely different from MFC. A lot of the Borland compiler options are actually to provide compatibility with MFC, other than that there isn't actually much overlap in the compiler options.

I occasionally provide Visual Studio 'solution' versions of my Borland projects to colleagues, and normally is simply a matter of selection the .cpp files in the solution and setting any global defines (These is console mode programs mind you, no GUI)

The greater issue is minor inconsistencies in stream classes, values.h and deprecated functions that Microsoft has dropped I.e. _stricmp() _chdir() _mkdir() _getcwd() instead of stricmp() chdir() mkdir() getcwd() etc...

I have generally not found the various Borland generated makefiles very compatible with any other compiler (or even with the Borland compiler for that matter).

Answer 3

I think it will be easier just to create new project in VS and then add all your source files and libraries into it. I don't think VS supports OWL (or any Borland libraries).