nmake, visualstudio, and .mak files

Question

I was given a C++ project that was compiled using MS Visual Studio .net 2003 C++ compiler, and a .mak file that was used to compile it. I am able to build it from the command line using nmake project.mak, but the compiler complains that afxres.h was not found. I did a little searching around and the afxres.h is in the Visual Studio directory in an includes file. Where am I supposed to specify to nmake where to look for this header file?

Answer 1

There should be an icon in your Start menu under Programs that opens a cmd.exe instance with all the correct MSVS environment variables set up for command line building.

Answer 2

Another option is running the appropriate vars batch file from a regular command prompt. The name and location varies from version to version. For VS2003, I believe it's

C:\Program Files\Microsoft Visual Studio.NET 2003\Vc7\bin\vcvars32.bat