DirectXMath and Win8 SDK in VS2010 project

Question

I've been working in an engine in Visual Studio 2012 that supports rendering with Direct3D 9 and Direct3D 11. However I'm getting some new people to help with the project and they would prefer to work on Visual Studio 2010 because that's the version they own and use. So I decided to convert the project to be built with VS2010's v100 platform toolset.

I'm getting close to getting it to work but I can't include DirectXMath.h, necessary for the DirectXTK and some utility functions I'm using. It's part of the Windows 8 SDK and included in VS2012, but VS2010 doesn't seem to find it.

Anyone knows how to get it to be included using environment variables so that it works for everybody on the team, and in a way that works on Win7 too?

Thanks.

Answer 1

To make new teammates be able to code in VS2010 you have several options:

1. You don't need to change platform toolset to old one and rewrite your codebase. VS2010 developers can just install Windows 8 SDK, and use v110 toolset. To help them, configure "VC++ directories" in project properties as pointed in this article (change macro variables, which points to old Windows SDK, to explicit locations of new Windows SDK):

   • In “Executable Directories” replace $(WindowsSdkDir)binwith$(ProgramFiles)\Windows Kits\8.0\bin\x86`
   • In “Include Directories” add $(ProgramFiles)\Windows Kits\8.0\Include\um;$(ProgramFiles)\Windows Kits\8.0\Include\shared at the beginning and remove $(WindowsSdkDir)include
   • In “Library Directories” replace $(WindowsSdkDir)lib with $(ProgramFiles)\Windows Kits\8.0\lib\win8\um\x86
   • In “Exclude Directories” replace $(WindowsSdkDir)include with $(ProgramFiles)\Windows Kits\8.0\Include\um;$(ProgramFiles)\Windows Kits\8.0\Include\shared
   • When targeting x64, replace x86 with x64

2. If you really want to downgrade toolset from v110 to v100, then you will need to make use old standalone DirectX SDK. Before, Windows SDK and DirectX SDK was separate. They was merged since Windows 7 SDK. When merging, Microsoft decidede to remove some stuff and also renamed some files, for example, standalone SDK contains math in #include <xmmath.h>.

3. You can combine both: create multiple project/platform configurations and inmplement conditional compilation via #ifdef where VS2010 configuration will fail to find headers/compile. For example you can use C++11 features in VS2012 branch of code, but in VS2010 branch you use only C++03 features.

I would prefer first option, but it is up to you to decide.

P.S. As far as I remember, project files from VS2012 (.vcxproj) cannot be opened in VS2010 (it knows only .vcproj), so you cannot share it. You will probably want to install VS2010, make .vcproj and maintain both files. It can be pain when you change project options in one, and forget to change in other, so be careful. Also, consider to move all your team to single IDE, or at least single build system (for example, CMake).

Happy coding!