.sln files in distribution (2.9.5?)

[Alec Ross]

It does seem useful to have the MS .sln files in the distribution for
library components and the samples. I'm assuming that this practice
will be continued into 2.9.5 and beyond. Correct? If so, I've a few
questions on these.

- are they expected to work out of the box? I do recall having some
issues with using these in the past; and seem to recall others having
more serious problems than I [*]. ISTM that it would be desirable that
they could build wxWidgets and then the samples simply by loading the
relevant .sln files, and then building. That is, to just work OTB,
without any additional work such as editing setup.h etc. Will this be
the expected situation?

- versions: Project & .sln files for earlier versions of VS seem in my
experience to convert fairly readily to later ones; but I do recall
reading about issues experienced by users in doing this. Would there be
enough merit in providing OTB .sln files for different versions up to,
say VS10? This could save users some (admittedly small) time, and
hopefully remove or reduce the possibility of user issues at this stage.


Some relevant links:

[*] http://forums.wxwidgets.org/viewtopic.php?f=19&t=35788

Reflects some recent discussions about this.

http://wiki.wxwidgets.org/Microsoft_Visual_C%2B%2B_Guide

Suggests using the .dsw files, and then, perhaps confusingly, later on
on the same that page, details a different install procedure for VS10,
using .sln files. All of this page's information is useful, but seems
to require editing to make it a) self-consistent, and b) more current.

Comments?

Alec
--
Alec Ross

[Vadim Zeitlin]

On Mon, 12 Nov 2012 17:41:00 +0000 Alec Ross wrote:

AR> It does seem useful to have the MS .sln files in the distribution for
AR> library components and the samples. I'm assuming that this practice
AR> will be continued into 2.9.5 and beyond. Correct?

No, not for the samples. Unless we change this when we upgrade to
bakefile-1.x.

AR> - are they expected to work out of the box?

Those that we provide are, yes. Unfortunately we can't do anything if we
don't provide e.g. VS 2012 projects and importing them from a previous
version fails. Although IME it actually works just fine.

AR> That is, to just work OTB, without any additional work such as editing
AR> setup.h etc. Will this be the expected situation?

There is never any need to edit setup.h. You _may_ do it but it's entirely
optional.

When using svn you do need to copy setup0.h to setup.h but this is for svn
checkouts only.

AR> - versions: Project & .sln files for earlier versions of VS seem in my
AR> experience to convert fairly readily to later ones; but I do recall
AR> reading about issues experienced by users in doing this. Would there be
AR> enough merit in providing OTB .sln files for different versions up to,
AR> say VS10?

Yes, I think we should provide wx_vc10.sln and wx_vc11.sln with 3.0. And
we should also set the project dependencies correctly in them for the DLL
builds to work out of the box. Again, if we switch to bakefile-1.x before
then it would be simple because it handles this correctly on its own. But
if we don't, we'd need to do this manually.

Regards,
VZ