hybrid development environment

Question

Moving from Linux, with its clean Filesystem Hierarchy to windows, i'd like to set up one or more dedicated folders to hold compilers and their related libraries, sysfs like, something like sysfs ... i'd like to find the elegant way to do this.

I mainly develop using C/C++ java and python. and even for C++ projects, managing libraries built with visual studio and mingw is a pain. i aim to share your experience if you've worked on this subject before. Do you set a dedicated development tree per compiler for example per par architecture(ia32 x86_64 etc) or you just follow the installer puting everything in program\\ /file etc ?

thank you in advance

Answer 1

What I've seen in the past is projects like this:

    MyProject \
        docs \
        source\
            includes\
        tests \
        targets \
            gcc\
            xcode\
            vs2008\
            vs2010\
                MyProject\
                Debugx86\
                Debugx64\
                Releasex86\
                Releasex64\

This allows all the compilers to keep thier project files separate, and all use the same source. This also prevents accidental cross-linkage between compilers/architectures

Answer 2

This isn't exactly on point, but I'm in the middle of the process of converting from Linux gcc/make to MSVS myself. The paradigm shift can be tricky. I'll just share last week's aha ! moment.

MSVS is all too willing to store absolute path names in project metadata, leading to frustration when you try to eg move to another computer. The macro feature allows you to specify various root directories symbolically in places like extra include or library directories. Use them.

Answer 3

I usually let VS, Qt/mingw, etc. install themselves where they wanted to go - ie I keep the default. Regarding my src-code-tree and build-tree, I always spend a lot of time and thought setting those up. I start by experimenting with the IDE (VS2008 in my most recent case), observe the default behavior and only then design my src-tree and bld-free. With VS2008 I so far use relative simple arrangement:

c:\\prj\\common_lib_cpp c:\\prj\\common_lib_cpp\\lib1 c:\\prj\\common_lib_cpp\\lib2 c:\\prj\\common_lib_csharp c:\\prj\\common_lib_csharp\\lib3 c:\\prj\\my_exe_prj1 c:\\prj\\my_exe_prj2

I am oversimplifying a little, but not much. This has worked well for me for 6+ months, no major problems. When I worked at Nuance some time ago, the src-tree was very carefully designed and the make-based build system was large, complex and robust. Windows and linux (several flavors) builds used the same src-tree. This is actually very hard task. Adrian Neagu (Nuance) used to have good blog / web articles on this topic.