Setting Up SDL with Visual C++ 2008 Express
Microsoft recently released Visual Studio Express. I wanted to see if my SDL setup instructions for Visual C++ 2005 Express (PDF) worked with Visual C++ 2008 Express so I installed Visual C++ 2008 Express and went through my instructions. The good news is Microsoft did not make a lot of changes in Visual C++ 2008 Express so most of the instructions still apply. There are two differences.
Unlike Visual C++ 2005 Express, Visual C++ 2008 Express ships with the Windows Platform SDK, also known as the Win32 SDK. Visual C++ 2008 Express’s Win32 SDK support means you don’t have to install the SDK separately, and you don’t have to modify any files to get Win32 support.
If you’re running Visual C++ 2008 Express, you can skip over the Installing the Windows Platform SDK, Updating the Visual C++ Properties File, and Updating the Application Wizard’s Settings File sections in my instructions.
In the section Telling Visual C++ Where to Find Your SDL Headers and Libraries, I said the path to the Win32 SDK was the following path:
If you install Visual C++ 2008 Express, you’ll find the Win32 SDK at the following path:
The v6.0A is the Win32 SDK version. If you’re reading this in the future, the version number may change.
Thank you for this.
I have tried to find a
decent tut for vc++ 2008
Thanks the gods you live.
Hi there,
Thanks for the tut and the original PDF for VC++ 2005 Express.
One question: In your PDF, in the section “Project Settings” for “Creating an SDL project”, you say to go to:
2) Choose Project > Properties.
3) Select C++ then Code Generation.
4) Make sure the runtime library is either Multi-threaded DLL or Multi-threaded Debug DLL.
However, these steps appear to be slightly different in Visual Studio Enterprise 2008 (which is what I’m using).
I clicked on Project->Properties but could not get “C++ –> Code Generation” or some such menu. Can you kindly point me in the right direction? I configured the linker dependencies ok, though.
Thank you!
The C++ information is hidden beneath the Configuration Properties disclosure triangle. Click the disclosure triangle to expand the configuration properties and you should see the C/C++ section in the project properties window.
The C++ menu does not appear immediately for me either. But once I added a .cpp file to the project the menu magically appeared. So add a .cpp (or .c) file to the project!
@Lenny Hello. I noticed that the step 1 in the topic “Proyect Settings” of the tutorial it’s particularly important, because if you select the Solution name (at the top of the tree) instead of the Project name (just the level below the solution name) you will come to a general-project-settings window. Only if you select the Project name, the Project settings window will open with all the options. It’s not really neccesary to create any file previous to those steps.
Hope that little explanation will help.
Ooops. I`m sorry Lenny, you were right. The particular c/c++ setting only appears if a .cpp or a .c file is previously created.
Sorry again for my mistake.
Just a little Coda: I needed to copy the .dll files in the route C:\Windows\System32 for the project to link appropriately.
YAY! thanks for the tip
I was having trouble finding the C++ subfolder
Thanks a lot for your pdf file explaining how to setup SDL with visual c++.
I spent 1~2 hours roaming the internet trying to find out what I was doing wrong. Then I found and read your guide and I finally was able to compile
Thanks again!