How to back up or move a project

Question

Someone set up a large complex visual studio project on my PC. The source sits on more than one directory and it uses the boost libraries. I wish to make some modifications to the source code to experiment with some ideas. But before I do that I want to make a back-up of the project elsewhere on my PC so that

1. I have a back up and
2. So that I can compare old and new.

My problem is that I don't know what files I should put where and I don't know how to modify the backed up project such that it will compile in its new location.

Is there a short guide somewhere that would help me?

Answer 1

OK @Mick, if you refuse to use source-code control;

1. Clean up the project, removing .o files and other built artefacts.
2. Copy the entire directory tree; with any luck BOOST is not in what you copy, if it is, either copy it or not, as you wish. If you don't copy it, then don't forget to update the project's definition of where to find it.
3. Declare one of the (right now identical) versions of the project to be the original. You might want to write-protect it.
4. Open up the VisualStudio project in the copy.
5. Build the project.
6. Or rather, attempt to build the project and start dealing with the problems that are thrown up. If your build uses exclusively relative file locations then you may find that it builds first time without errors. If you make extensive use of absolute file locations, you may want to ensure that they all refer to locations in the copy of the project.

I don't think that there is any other realistic option for you but to copy files, re-build, and deal with the issues that arise.