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Visual studio mangles resource file: is prevention possible ?

Ah hello.

I have a resource file, that contains several #if defined statements. The purpose of these is simply to only provide certain functionality if a symbol is defined.

For example,

#if defined (_LIMITED_FEATURE)
MENUITEM "Limited Feature.", ID_FILE_LIMITED_FEATURE
#endif

But I find that occasionally visual studio will remove all my #if defined statements (meaning all menu items are available regardless of any symbol I may define), which is a total pain. Is there any way I can prevent it doing this ? I have been advised it is something to do with the macro APSTUDIO_INVOKED, but Googling only brings back other people's resource files: not useful.

TIA

SOLUTION

AndyAinscow

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jimwasson

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ASKER CERTIFIED SOLUTION

rcarlan

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AndyAinscow

A further point (you have probably considered) is the whole design concept.
I prefer that the end user (paying customer?) sees that some functionality that is only available in the version they pay <more> for (advertising in a word ! ).
If there is a good reason that some functionality should be hidden then I find code easier to maintain if the mechanism to hide is in one location not a bit in the resource editor, another bit in the header and in a further two/three places in the cpp file. (MessageMap, OnCommand, OnUpdateCommand). Yes it is fractionally larger, yes it takes 0.01 seconds longer to launch. If it is a huge ammount of code to hide then it could be in a dll and only invoked with LoadLibrary, GetProcAddress so the exe has little extra code in it.

mrwad99

ASKER

Thanks for those suggestions all; Radu's one was ultimately the easiest so was accepted as the solution.

Cheers.