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

Write a .lua script for premake5 - https://premake.github.io/ How to can be found here: https://github.com/premake/premake-core/wiki

And then simply create project for specific visual studio using visual studio version from command line - for example like this:

premake5 --file=myproject.lua vs2015
premake5 --file=myproject.lua vs2010

Typical script looks like this:

-- If visual studio version is not specified from command line - use vs2013
if _ACTION == nil then
    _ACTION = "vs2013"
end

buildvsver = _ACTION

--
-- I typically use "_vs2013" suffix so autogenerated projects won't conflict with each other.
--
solution ( "MyOwnSolution" .. "_" .. buildvsver)
    platforms {  "x32", "x64" }
    configurations { "Debug", "Release" }
    objdir (  "obj/" .. buildvsver)

project ("MyOwnProject" .. "_" .. buildvsver)
    kind     "SharedLib"                -- http://industriousone.com/kind: ConsoleApp | SharedLib | StaticLib | WindowedApp
    platforms {  "x32", "x64" }
    language "C++"
    targetdir ("bin/%{cfg.buildcfg}_%{cfg.platform}_" .. buildvsver)

    -- If you use managed code
    flags { "Managed" }

    flags { "MFC" }
    flags { "Unicode" }

    -- Add dependency on another project:
    -- dependson { "OtherProject" .. "_" .. buildvsver }

    -- If you use managed code - you can specify .net framework version.
    framework "4.0"

    files {
        "mysource1.cpp",
        "myheader1.h",
        "myheader2.cpp",
    }

    links {
        -- Some of dependent libraries
        "dbghelp.lib",
        "delayimp.lib"
    }

    -- Force to delay load some .dll
    -- Custom / advanced flags.
    linkoptions { "/delayload:dbghelp.dll " }
    linkoptions { "/delayload:mscoree.dll " }

    configuration "*"
        -- I typically use 'ReleaseRuntime' - that's debug = release configuration. 
        -- No special .dll's are needed even for debug version of your application
        flags { "NoRuntimeChecks", "ReleaseRuntime" }

        -- Debug symbols.
        flags { "Symbols" }

        -- Executable name without _vs2013 prefix.
        targetname ( "MyOwnProject" )

        -- C++ defines for both - release and debug configurations.
        defines { "NDEBUG", "_CRT_SECURE_NO_WARNINGS", "WIN32", "WINVER=0x0600", "_WIN32_WINNT=0x0600" }

        -- debugcommand "customExeToLaunch.exe"

        -- Custom post build steps.
        -- postbuildcommands { "call $(ProjectDir)projexport.bat $(PlatformName) $(TargetPath)" }

    configuration "Release"
        -- Only difference from debug - is optimizations for speed.
        optimize "Speed"

        -- Can debug in release.

        --
        -- Enhance Optimized Debugging
        -- https://randomascii.wordpress.com/2013/09/11/debugging-optimized-codenew-in-visual-studio-2012/
        -- https://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/dn785163.aspx
        --
        buildoptions { "/Zo" }


project ("TestMyProject" .. "_" .. buildvsver)
    platforms {  "x32", "x64" }
    kind     "ConsoleApp"
    language "C#"
    targetdir ("bin/%{cfg.buildcfg}_%{cfg.platform}_" .. buildvsver)
    framework "4.0"

    links {
        "System",
        "System.Core",
        "System.Data",
        "System.Drawing",
        "System.Windows.Forms",
        "System.Xml",
        "MyOwnProject" .. "_" .. buildvsver
    }

    files    { 
        "TestMyProject.cs",
    }

    configuration "*"
        targetname ( "TestMyProject" )
        flags { "Symbols" }
        defines { "DEBUG" }

After you reach some sort of understanding how things works - you can even create for .lua itself it's own custom build step to launch premake5, or even to customize project generation - like create lua functions which helps you more advanced projects.

Please note that I'm using a lot of advanced stuff which you might not need (Most of my projects are compiling for 64 and 32 bit cpu's, and so on...) - may be it makes sense to start from zero than to copy config shown by me. Then you will have understanding how things works.