How to downgrade solution from Visual Studio 2010 to Visual Studio 2005?

Question

I have a huge Visual Studio 2010 solution. I work with Visual Studio 2005, so I want to convert the solution to the desired version. Basically, it\'s a portable C++ code so it s

Answer 1

It really totally sucks, that every proprietary IDE today thinks it needs to create its own project file format. "Dear IDE developers, just use Makefiles and create a nice GUI for it so that also people without Makefile knowledge can use it!" In VS6 it was at least possible to import/export Makefiles, but not today anymore. And it was possible to use nmake for automated builds. No IDE needed to be installed, just the toolchain which could be grabbed by a simple checkout without installation.

I use CMake now. It's free, it's cross-platform, it is well supported in free IDEs like KDevelop, QtCreator, etc. It can generate Makefiles and Visual Studio projects. So you maintain only one project source, the CMakeLists.txt file and can work with any IDE. No pain with different versions of Visual Studio or with other proprietary project file formats. This way you can generate or VS projects for developing and you can generate Makefiles for commandline builds using nmake like in the good old days.

BTW, it's much easier to change settings in a CMakeLists.txt than clicking through various GUI dialogs. But this is a matter of personal preferences.