Visual Studio

Visual Studio is an integrated development environment (IDE) from Microsoft.

Index

• General
• Editor
• C/C++
• Build
• Debug

General

Add manifest file.

• Right click on Solution Explorer → Project → Add → New Item → Application Manifest File.
• The file app.manifest will be created.

Editor

Fix inconsistent line endings.

• Go to Edit → Find and Replace → Quick Replace.
• Check Use Regular Expressions.
• Replace (?<!\r)\n for \r\n.

Hide reference counts.

• Go to Tools → Options → Text Editor → All Languages → CodeLens.
• Uncheck Enable CodeLens or Show C# and Visual Basic References.

Hide vertical dotted indentation.

• Go to Tools → Options → Text Editor.
• Uncheck Show structure guide lines.

C/C++

Add include directories.

• Go to Project → Properties → C/C++ → General.
• Add to Additional Include Directories the path $(ProjectDir)path\to\include.

Add library directories.

• Go to Project → Properties → Linker → General.
• Add to Additional Library Directories the path $(ProjectDir)path\to\lib.

Add library.

• Go to Project → Properties → Linker → Input.
• Add to Additional Dependencies the .lib file.

Set UTF-8 source character set.

• Go to Project → Properties → C/C++ → Command Line.
• Add to Additional Options the flag /utf-8.
  OR
  
• Go to Project → Properties → C/C++ → Advanced.
• Set Source File Character Set to Use Unicode UTF-8.

Build

Change build directory.

• Go to Project → Properties → General.
• Change Output Directory to $(SolutionDir)build\$(Platform)\$(Configuration)\.
• Change Intermediate Directory to $(SolutionDir)build\intermediate\$(Platform)\$(Configuration)\.

Copy files on post-build.

• Go to Project → Properties → Build Events → Post-Build Event.
• Add to Command line the instruction copy /Y $(ProjectDir)path\to\files\*.ext $(OutDir).

Debug

Automatically close console when debug stops.

• Go to Tools → Options → Debugging.
• Check Automatically close the console when debugging stops.

Run debug as administrator.

• Go to app.manifest → <requestedPrivileges> and add the execution level requirement:

<requestedExecutionLevel level="requireAdministrator" uiAccess="false"/>

• When trying to debug, the editor will warn about the admin right and restart itself with admin rights.
• The executable will be marked as requiring admin rights, therefore when deploying is not necessary to configure admin rights in the file properties.