How to make a single static library from multiple static libraries?

Question

Hello everyone,

We recently converted a C++ project from Visual Studio 6 to Visual Studio 8. Everything went well until we reached the compilation of a project who put all the static libraries inside one big static library. By default after the conversion between the two version of projects the project didn't do anything (no big static library was created, it only said that the project was up-to-date).

We found a working solution by adding a dummy (empty) file to the project (it had no other files before, in the Visual Studio 6 solution). Everything went well and we managed to compile the project with the new development environment (Visual Studio 8).

My question is: Is there any other way to do this, without dummy files added to the project?

Thanks in advance for your responses

Answer 1

Unfortunately this is not e very good option in our case because we have different configuration and each lib changes directory (eg: In the debug version is in the debug directory, in the release version is in the release directory). So doing this is out of the question due to the configurations we use. It would be too complicated to maintain the project this way.

Answer 2

You can use the method described in the answer by nobugz also with multiple configurations and different directories for debug and release input libs. Just add all input libs, debug and release, and use "exclude from build". In the debug configuration exclude all release input libs from the build, in the release configuration exclude all debug input libs.