How to reference one copy of vcxproj.filters and vcxproj.user per project between visual studio 2017 and visual studio 2019

Question

I have a c++ project created in Visual Studio 2017 community edition and I have opened and "converted" it with Visual Studio 2019 community edition. The project folder contains:

Main.sln
Main/Main.vcxproj
Main/Main.vcxproj.filters
Main/Main.vcxproj.user

According to Winmerge, the conversion only affected two values within Main/Main.vcxproj:

<WindowsTargetPlatformVersion>10.0.17134.0</WindowsTargetPlatformVersion>
...
<PlatformToolset>v141</PlatformToolset>

changed to

<WindowsTargetPlatformVersion>10.0</WindowsTargetPlatformVersion>
...
<PlatformToolset>v142</PlatformToolset>

What options exist for maintaining one copy of most or all of these project files for both, VS2017 and VS2019?

Also, I would like to know:

• Is there support for conditionals within.vcxproj or.sln?
• Is there a way to explicitly point to a.vcxproj in one folder path and *.vcxproj.filters and *.vcxproj.user in another?

---

Thanks!

Answer 1

Hopefully, this will help someone later.

MSBuild supports conditionals defined within the.vcxproj files that can key off of the available macros. I also found that values can be replaced by being set again further down in the file.

This example talks about checking and setting the VisualStudioVersion macro.

The solutions I found use the DefaultPlatformToolset macro, which is v141 for VS2017 and v142 for VS2019.

There are two ways that Main.vcxproj could use this in a conditional:

1) Use the Choose, When, and Otherwise tags around PropertyGroups containing the necessary values:

<Choose>
  <When Condition="'$(DefaultPlatformToolset)'=='v141'">
    <PropertyGroup Label="Globals">
      <WindowsTargetPlatformVersion>10.0.17134.0</WindowsTargetPlatformVersion>
    </PropertyGroup>
    <PropertyGroup Label="Configuration">
      <PlatformToolset>v141</PlatformToolset>
    </PropertyGroup>
  </When>
  <When Condition="'$(DefaultPlatformToolset)'=='v142'">
    <PropertyGroup Label="Globals">
      <WindowsTargetPlatformVersion>10.0</WindowsTargetPlatformVersion>
    </PropertyGroup>
    <PropertyGroup Label="Configuration">
      <PlatformToolset>v142</PlatformToolset>
    </PropertyGroup>
  </When>
  <Otherwise>
    <PropertyGroup Label="Globals">
      <WindowsTargetPlatformVersion>$(DefaultWindowsSDKVersion)</WindowsTargetPlatformVersion>
    </PropertyGroup>
    <PropertyGroup Label="Configuration">
      <PlatformToolset>$(DefaultPlatformToolset)</PlatformToolset>
    </PropertyGroup>
  </Otherwise>
</Choose>

2) Set the Conditional property of the PropertyGroups:

<PropertyGroup Label="Globals">
  <WindowsTargetPlatformVersion>$(DefaultWindowsSDKVersion)</WindowsTargetPlatformVersion>
</PropertyGroup>
<PropertyGroup Condition="'$(DefaultPlatformToolset)'=='v141'" Label="Globals">
  <WindowsTargetPlatformVersion>10.0.17134.0</WindowsTargetPlatformVersion>
</PropertyGroup>
<PropertyGroup Condition="'$(DefaultPlatformToolset)'=='v142'" Label="Globals">
  <WindowsTargetPlatformVersion>10.0</WindowsTargetPlatformVersion>
</PropertyGroup>

Another approach may be to use a.sln file per Visual Studio version and base conditionals on the $(SolutionFileName) macro.

<Choose>
  <When Condition="'$(SolutionFileName)'=='Main_VS2017.sln'">
    ...
  </When>
  <When Condition="'$(SolutionFileName)'=='Main_VS2019.sln'">
    ...
  </When>
</Choose>

Answer 2

I've used the solution from http://www.markusweimer.com/2016/03/14/visual-c++/ hust converted it to 2015 and 2019.

<!--
    Switch the PlatformToolset based on the Visual Studio Version
-->
<PropertyGroup>
    <!-- Assume Visual Studio 2015 / 14.0 as the default -->
    <VisualStudioVersion Condition="'$(VisualStudioVersion)' == ''">14.0</VisualStudioVersion>
</PropertyGroup>
<!-- Visual Studio 2019 (16.0) -->
<PropertyGroup Condition="'$(VisualStudioVersion)' == '16.0'">
    <ConfigurationType>DynamicLibrary</ConfigurationType>
    <UseOfMfc>false</UseOfMfc>
    <CharacterSet>MultiByte</CharacterSet>
    <PlatformToolset>v142</PlatformToolset>
</PropertyGroup>
<!-- Visual Studio 2015 (14.0) -->
<PropertyGroup Condition="'$(VisualStudioVersion)' == '14.0'">
    <ConfigurationType>DynamicLibrary</ConfigurationType>
    <UseOfMfc>false</UseOfMfc>
    <CharacterSet>MultiByte</CharacterSet>
    <PlatformToolset>v140</PlatformToolset>
</PropertyGroup>
<!--
    End of: Switch the PlatformToolset based on the Visual Studio Version
-->

Works like a charm...