How to use Clang compiler with MSBuild?

Question

I\'m trying to take a couple of projects normally compiled on Windows with Microsoft C++ and compile them with clang instead.

On the upside, there exists clang-cl.ex

Answer 1

Since Visual Studio 2019 16.2, Microsoft provide an integration of MSbuild and ClangCl. So this can be achieved by:

• Installing the “C++ Clang Tools for Windows” component
• Choosing the "LLVM (clang-cl)” toolset in the IDE

Microsoft's blog post has more information on this: https://devblogs.microsoft.com/cppblog/clang-llvm-support-for-msbuild-projects/

Answer 2

This is easy to do from either command line or project file. The properties you need to configure are $(CLToolExe) and $(CLToolPath).

From the command line:

msbuild MyProj.vcxproj /p:CLToolExe=clang-cl.exe /p:CLToolPath=c:\whatever\path\to\the\tool

Alternatively, inside your .vcxproj file:

<PropertyGroup>
  <CLToolExe>clang-cl.exe</CLToolExe>
  <CLToolPath>c:\whatever\path\to\the\tool</CLToolPath>
</PropertyGroup>

If you are calling task CL directly inside your .vcxproj file, as opposed to just relying on common targets, just set corresponding parameters ToolExe and ToolPath of the CL task.