Windows 7 3-min. Quickie: Compiling C++ Projects using only the Windows SDK and the Command Prompt

[News]

I have received a couple questions about "How do you build C++ projects in Windows without installing Visual Studio?". This video demonstrates the process but to explain it in a couple short steps:

• Download and Install the Windows SDK*
• Open the Windows SDK command prompt**
• Browse to your project folder
• run "vcupdate .vcproj"
• run "msbuild .vcxproj

*Make sure that you check to enable the Windows Native Code Development section on the installer.

** Although it is not a best practice, I elevated my priviledges for the command prompt when I did the demo because I wanted to show that projects build right out of the SDK. Had I copied the folder to my desktop, I would not have needed to run the Windows SDK command prompt priviledged.

This task is really useful if you want to perform automated builds on your own machine or you need to perform builds on a machine that doesn't need Visual Studio, such as a build server. However, this is not really a substitution for having Visual Studio for development.

For more information about building using the Windows SDK, see the Microsoft Windows SDK Blog.

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