[llvm-dev] Should we stop supporting building with Visual Studio?

[Michael Spencer via llvm-dev]

On Wed, Oct 10, 2018 at 9:04 AM Alexandre Ganea via llvm-dev <
llvm-dev at lists.llvm.org> wrote:

> I'm not sure if that was mentioned, but Ninja could potentially be used
> inside Visual Studio with a Makefile project type [1].
> We're already doing this to compile with Fastbuild inside Visual Studio.
>
> You generate `cmake -G"Visual Studio 15 2017 Win64" ...` in such way that,
> in Project Properties / General / Project Defaults, "Configuration Type"
> would be set to "Makefile" for all generated .vcxproj.
> For example:
>
>   <PropertyGroup Condition="'$(Configuration)|$(Platform)'=='FastBuild
> Debug|x64'" Label="Configuration">
>     <ConfigurationType>Makefile</ConfigurationType>
>   </PropertyGroup>
>
> Now a "NMake" section replaces all the previous sections in "Project
> Properties". This is where any batch command(s) can be called for
> building/rebuild/clean. In this case, we would probably use `ninja -C
> build_release` for example:
>
>   <PropertyGroup Condition="'$(Configuration)|$(Platform)'=='FastBuild
> Debug|x64'">
>     <NMakeBuildCommandLine>ninja -C build_debug</NMakeBuildCommandLine>
>     <NMakeReBuildCommandLine> ninja -t rebuild -C
> build_debug</NMakeReBuildCommandLine>
>     <NMakeCleanCommandLine>ninja -t clean -C
> build_debug</NMakeCleanCommandLine>
>   </PropertyGroup>
>
> To avoid calling ninja many times for each vcxproj, we also disable the
> "Build" checkbox in the "Configuration Manager" for all projects but one
> (say for ALL_BUILD).
>
> The only quirk I see would be for the NMake batch to first call `cmake -G
> Ninja" with the parameters initially passed to `cmake -G"Visual Studio 15
> 2017".
>
> This overall scheme would retain the different targets in Visual Studio
> (Debug, Release, RelWithDebInfo, etc.) by passing a different
> CMAKE_BUILD_TYPE to the above NMake batch file.
>
> The only thing you're loosing with this is the ability to compile as
> single .cpp (Ctrl-F7). However, you can get around that by installing the
> "Clang Power Tools" extension and bind a key for that purpose.
>
> --------------------
> [1]
> https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/cpp/ide/creating-a-makefile-project?view=vs-2017
>

What benefit would this give us?

- Michael Spencer
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://lists.llvm.org/pipermail/llvm-dev/attachments/20181011/dcf03efa/attachment.html>