VS 2010 and CMake: 'rc' is not recognized as an internal or external command

Question

I\'m trying to build a project on Windows 10 - Home using VS 2010 and CMake. I\'m getting the following errors:

zutil.c  
lib -nologo -out:zlib.lib adler32.obj c         


        

Answer 1

The last time I had this problem was when my Visual Studio 2012 Professional standard installation did not install any Windows SDK (the error log was showing an missing SDK header).

To verify your SDK installation e.g. check that you have any Resource Compiler installed. It should be in a path similar to:

C:\Program Files (x86)\Microsoft SDKs\Windows\v[some version]\bin\RC.Exe

Since I was missing this - or more accurate any SDK - I installed Windows 8.1 SDK (since Visual Studio 2012 does target Windows 8.x) and voila my CMake was able again to compile the (test) programs. I think for Visual Studio 2010 the default would be the Windows 7.0a SDK and for Visual Studio 2015 it would be Windows 10 SDK with Universal C Runtime.

Reference

• The CXX compiler identification is unknown
• Visual Studio 2010 Express, Windows SDK 7.1, CMake and 64 bit