How do I make a Visual Studio 2015 C++ project compatible with Visual Studio 2010?

Question

My teacher is horsed to use Visual Studio 2010 by the school, because they don\'t want to bother installing anything new. I\'ve been using Visual Studio 2015

Answer 1

The problem is that the project file references the v140 C++ toolset, which basically means use the C++ compiler from Visual Studio 2015. This compiler is not installed, which causes your error message.

From the top of my head, there are two ways for you to overcome your situation:

• Install Visual Studio 2010 on your computer. Then, from within 2015, select the 2010 platform toolset in the project settings. Your project will then always be compiled with 2010, but you have the advantage to not accidentally use C++ features that 2010 does not have.

• Don't install Visual Studio 2010 on your computer, but use the second computer (with just 2010 installed) to create a second build configuration, which has the platform toolset set to Visual Studio 2010 (v100). Use the appropriate configuration depending on which Visual Studio you use.

Both of these solutions basically mean you do not use the improved C++ capabilities of Visual Studio 2015 over Visual Studio 2010, which is somewhat unfortunate.