A “Build Workspace” menu command for Windows Explorer

Sample Image

What does it do?

As you may have noticed, this macro implements an action for Project Workspaces besides the default one (Open with MSDEV). The purpose of this macro is to allow you to do a background build of a selected configuration from the selected workspace. A Developer Studio instance is created invisible and starts compiling the workspace, after which it quits.

How to use it?

This code was developed and tested with Visual C++ 6.0 SP3 and WinNT 4.0 SP4. It requires Windows Scripting Host 5.0 available Microsoft at http//www.microsoft.com/msdownload/vbscript/scripting.asp.

There are two flags you can use with the script

Flag Description

-Rebuild[Configuration hint]

Activates the Rebuild All mode, and optionally, hints the script to which configuration to use.

-BuildConfiguration hint

Hints the script to which configuration to use.

The configuration hint is a substring of a project configuration name. For example, if you have the following configurations in your project

  • Win32 Debug;
  • Win32 Debug Unicode;
  • Win32 Release; and
  • Win32 Release Unicode.

and you pass “Release”, the script will build Win32 Release. It selects the shortest name that contains the desired string.

Finally, to install it

Edit the .reg file and replace C\\Program Files\\Microsoft Visual Studio\\Common\\IDE\\build.vbs for the actual path you will be using. In my case, I have put the script file in a shared directory alongside with the .reg so that anyone has access to the latest version of the script. Anyone that wishes to install this feature just has to execute the .reg file.


REGEDIT4

[HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\dswfile\shell\Build_Workspace]
"EditFlags"=hex01,00,00,00
@="Build Workspace"

[HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\dswfile\shell\Build_Workspace\command]
@="wscript.exe \\build.vbs \"%1\""

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