Is it possible to run the Visual Studio Conversion Wizard from the command line?

Question

I'm currently working on a project to receive data from an external source, and the company we're receiving from has provided an SDK with various C functions and structures to encode and decode the data. The SDK is provided as source, and we have to compile it ourselves.

To get the code to work with our software on Windows, I want to simply compile the code using devenv {project file} /build and the project file they provided. However to do so I first need to upgrade the project from VS2003 to VS2008 and then make some minor adjustments to the build configuration (runtime type, etc). I have tested upgrading the project, making the tweaks and then compiling it, and it works fine, but I'd like to automate it in bash/Cygwin for future SDK updates.

Is there any way of running the VS2008 conversion wizard from the command line so I don't have to upgrade the project manually every time the SDK is updated, or am I forever condemned to doing it by hand?

Alternatively, is there a way of avoiding the conversion wizard altogether and simply compiling a VS2003 project without VS2003 installed?

Thanks.

Answer 1

The existence of this suggests that Microsoft does not support what you need.

VSPC is the console utility for converting between project formats for various versions of Microsoft Visual Studio. Currently the project supports VS 2002, 2003, 2005 and 2008.

Answer 2

I haven't tried it yet but the Microsoft site does provide this solution:

Batch Conversion of Solutions or Projects

To automate the conversion of many solutions or projects, you can create a batch file that uses the command-line upgrade tools. For more information, see /Upgrade (devenv.exe). The upgrade report provides information about source-controlled solutions or projects that were not converted because files in them were checked out. After those files are checked in, you can run the batch file again to convert those solutions or projects

I'd suggest you visit the link for more info.