Visual Studio Project Creator

This python script creates Visual Studio projects for you using template directories! This comes in handy if you don´t want to change all the settings every time you create a new project in Visual Studio or if you want all your projects to be structured the same way.

The created projects feature:

• Clean build environment
• Auto include the correct .lib files for the current build target
• Auto copy the correct .dlls to the bin directory
• The build executables do not need any Visual Studio Redistributable Packages to run on other machines

Generated folder structure:

• bin Here are several subdirectories generated after build that contain your final exes
• build Internal Visual Studio stuff. just ignore it ;)
• include Here are your .h header files stored
• lib In the two subdirectories corresponding to the different build targets you can put your additional .libs and .dlls. Note: The.dlls are automatically copied to the bin directory
  • x64
  • x86
• run In this folder, the program is run by Visual Studio. Put files that the project uses while running there but no .dlls
• src Here comes your code

Requirements

• python 2.7+ and python 3 (should work with all modern versions)

Configuration

In the top of the createproject.py you can configure:

• emptydirs_file_name = ".emptydirs" This is necessary because you can´t push empty dirs in git. But if you use it on your local computer you can just create empty directories in your template folder! But don´t delete this file as it is used to identify template directories in input mode (not when specified by command-line)!

Usage

Windows

Run createproject.bat in the folder you want the project to be created or just double click it and move the folder afterwards. You will be prompted with the project´s name and template.

Linux

Run createproject.sh in the folder you want the project to be created. You will be prompted with the project´s name and template.

Other (using python)

Run python createproject.py [-i] [TEMPLATE NAME] [PROJECT NAME] in the folder you want the project to be created. Invoking the -i option will prompt you with the project´s name and template.

Custom templates

Of course this is a pretty simple script that can be applied to different templates. To use your own template (It could be for whatever you want) simply modify / replace the files in the template folder. Use $PROJECTNAME$ as a wildcard / dummy in filenames and file contents for the project´s name. Use $UUID_*NUMBER IDENTIFIER*$ as a wildcard for randomly generated UUID´s. Note: The identifier only corresponds to one UUID (template wide, not just the file!) after first use.

$UUID_123$ in file a == $UUID_123$ in file b.

Have fun using this small but hopefully useful script.

Simon