Appveyor build for Windows Tutorial

[sriramsk1999]

Handling #1463

So far, I have created a .vcxproj file using the project config details in the tutorial

Would like to know if I'm on the right track :)

[zoq]

You are one the right track, let me know if I should clarify anything.

[sriramsk1999]

Hey @zoq :)

As far as I understand it, it should happen this way:

• Add another build script in the appveyor.yml file to compile sample-ml-app.cpp
• Parse the parameters for the build script from the xml file sample-ml-app.vcxproj

Does that sound right? And if so, do you have any references for how to parse the xml file?
Thanks :)

[zoq]

Haven't checked, but I think msbuild should be able to read the xml file and compile the project.

[zoq]

Debugging the windows build can be tedious, what I usually do is download the log and search for "error".

[sriramsk1999]

@zoq, do you have any idea why the build is failing? The error in the log is:

error MSB8036: The Windows SDK version 10.0.18362 was not found. Install the required version of Windows SDK or change the SDK version in the project property pages or by right-clicking the solution and selecting "Retarget solution". [C:\projects\mlpack\dist\win-installer\staging\examples\sample-ml-app\sample-ml-app\sample-ml-app.vcxproj]

But the Windows SDK 10.0.18362 is shown to be pre-installed on both Visual Studio 15 and 17 images over here

[rcurtin]

I'm not sure exactly what the build issue is, but maybe my comment helps. Another option if we can't figure it out is to use CMake to generate the appropriate vcxproj file (that might be a little tedious though).

[rcurtin]

Should we be using the .appveyor/sample-ml-app.vcxproj file here that you added?

[sriramsk1999]

I was using the file in doc/examples because the directory was already copied over into the staging directory. I will try switching directories and see if that changes anything

[rcurtin]

Yeah, it just seemed to me like the .appveyor/ vcxproj is different, so that is probably the one we should use here. (I suppose it's possible we may need to make one for each version of Visual Studio that AppVeyor builds for? I am not sure).

[sriramsk1999]

It still throws the same error of the Windows SDK not being found. As for separate scripts, I 10.0.18362 seems to be pre-installed on both 2015 and 2017 images of Visual Studio, so I think that being a problem is unlikely.

[mlpack-bot]

This issue has been automatically marked as stale because it has not had any recent activity. It will be closed in 7 days if no further activity occurs. Thank you for your contributions! 👍

[sriramsk1999]

Closing this in light of #2058

[rcurtin]

@sriramsk1999 right, sounds good, we can maybe use what we learned here to get this working on Azure pipelines. Maybe that will fix the strange issue we encountered here too :)