I have a huge Visual Studio 2010 solution. I work with Visual Studio 2005, so I want to convert the solution to the desired version. Basically, it's a portable C++ code so it should compile on Visual Studio 2005 too. Changing the version in the *.sln file doesn't help because the *.vcxproj format is completely different from the old *.vcproj format.
Recreating the solution by hand is not an option because of its size. Also there may be some non-default compiler flags, dependencies, etc. that I don't know of (and I can't look through ALL this XML junk that I don't understand).
There is already a related question on How Do I Downgrade a C++ Visual Studio 2008 Project to 2005. However, the utility suggested there supports at most Visual Studio 2008.
Any suggestions?
Best Answer
It really totally sucks, that every proprietary IDE today thinks it needs to create its own project file format. "Dear IDE developers, just use Makefiles and create a nice GUI for it so that also people without Makefile knowledge can use it!" In VS6 it was at least possible to import/export Makefiles, but not today anymore. And it was possible to use nmake for automated builds. No IDE needed to be installed, just the toolchain which could be grabbed by a simple checkout without installation.
I use CMake now. It's free, it's cross-platform, it is well supported in free IDEs like KDevelop, QtCreator, etc. It can generate Makefiles and Visual Studio projects. So you maintain only one project source, the CMakeLists.txt file and can work with any IDE. No pain with different versions of Visual Studio or with other proprietary project file formats. This way you can generate or VS projects for developing and you can generate Makefiles for commandline builds using nmake like in the good old days.
BTW, it's much easier to change settings in a CMakeLists.txt than clicking through various GUI dialogs. But this is a matter of personal preferences.