Visual Studio 9 C++ Project to be compiled as VC8

>>How can I use Visual Studio 2008 to compile the project using VC8 run time files, instead of VC9?

Sorry, no can do.
You need to either downgrade or to distribute the VC9 runtimes with your app.

>>>> for VC8, the run time files are already included with Windows XP

IMO they were installed on the PC by an application, not by the OS itself.

The best solution is to distrubite the VC9 runtimes with the app:
http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?FamilyID=9b2da534-3e03-4391-8a4d-074b9f2bc1bf&displaylang=en

itsmeandnobodyelse:

>> (the only thing to change - temporaly - is the VC version in the .vcproj files
How could this be done?
Just open the .vcproj file in a text editor and change the version number?
Then open in VS2005 and compile it, and then re-do the change in the .vcproj file to make it back to vs2008.
Is this what you mean?

If not, would you please describe a little more...

Thanks.

in addition to
>>You must not downgrade in the IDE but only make the final built with VC8.
I would suspect that you would also not use ANY of the new implementations in MFC supplied with VS2008.  Interesting idea however.

>>>> Just open the .vcproj file in a text editor and change the version number?
I would do it programmatically by copying the original .vcproj to a new file and  updating the version number to VC8. After that set the VC8 environment (PATH, INCLUDE, LIB) for VC8 and call the VC8 vcbuild passing the new project filename.

That way you would not miss any new project settings.

The console prog below probably would do the version update.

you could call the prog in a command file passing full path of VC9 .vcproj and a path to a the temporary  VC8 .vcproj.

Then, set PATH,INCLUDE,LIB environment variables so that they fit to VC8 and use vcbuild to make a commandfile build.

Note, check your vcproj that it doesn't contain paths pointing to VC9 folders. If so, you might change these settings - if possible - to use macros which you could switch from VC9 to VC8 and vice versa.

#include <fstream>
#include <string>
using namespace std;
 
int main(int nargs, char* szargs[])
{
   if (nargs <= 2) return -1;
   string line;
   ifstream ifs(szargs[1]);
   ofstream ofs(szargs[2]);
 
   bool versionUpdateDone = false;
   int  versionPos        = 0;
   while (getline(ifs, line))
   {
      if (versionUpdateDone == false && 
          (versionPos = (int)line.find("Version=")) != string::npos)
      {
         int pos1 = (int)line.find('"', versionPos);
         int pos2 = (int)line.find('"', pos1 + 1);
         if (pos1 == string::npos || pos2 < pos1 + 1) return -2;
         line = line.substr(0, pos1) + "8.00" + line.substr(pos2);
         versionUpdateDone = true;
      }
      ofs << line << endl;
   }
   ifs.close();
   ofs.close();
 
   return 0;
}

Select allOpen in new window