Visual Studio 2010 & 2008 Can't Handle Source Files with Identical Names in Different Folders

Visual Studio 2010 & 2008 can't handle source files with identical names in different folders?

So @Hans Passant pointed in the right direction, Thanks!! You don't have to list the file, a folder is sufficient. Then if you look in the defined macros at the bottom of the VS 2010 list, you'll see:

%(RelativeDir)/ Univariate/

The problem, as posted, was actually a simplified version of what I'm working on -- a couple of levels of folders in a single project and there are a couple of name conflicts. Hence, I really wanted someway to just "fix" it...

If you right click on the project in the solution explorer, choose C/C++ -> "Output Files" and type the following into the "Object File Name" box:

$(IntDir)/%(RelativeDir)/

Note that I also selected (All Configurations, All Platforms) from the drop downs. This will compile every file in a directory hierarchy which mirrors the source tree. VS2010 will begin the build by creating these directories if they don't exist. Further, for those who hate white space in their directory names, this macro does remove all spaces, so there is no need to play around with double quotes when using it.

This is exactly what I wanted -- identical to the way my Makefiles work on the Ubuntu side, while still keeping the source tree clean.

VisualStudio project with multiple sourcefiles of the same name?

You can set a file-specific project setting for one (or both) of the files that conflict and set the "Object File Name" property to:

$(InputDir)\$(IntDir)\

Just right-click the filename instead of the project name to set the property for that file only.

For example, if you do that for \MyProject\foo\File.cpp then the object file for that source file will go to \MyProject\foo\Release\File.obj so it won't conflict with the object file for \MyProject\bar\File.cpp.

The drawbacks to this are that it can clutter your source tree with compiler outputs (but hopefully there aren't too many), and - even worse - file-specific project settings tend to get forgotten/hidden since they're not called out in the IDE at all. If sometime down the road you (or someone else) needs to change things, it can be quite a mystery about why the build acts so strangely for particular files until someone screws around with it for a half a day until it dawns on them what's going on.

I would personally prefer that a project-wide setting of $(InputDir)\$(IntDir)\ would cause object files to go to directories relative to the source file, but it actually doesn't work well at all as a project level setting. In that case VS still only sets the output directory once and it ends up being relative to the first source file in the list. Then the linker gets confused about where it should look for object files.

Two files of the same name give linker error in Visual Studio

I believe the problem comes from the fact that all your .obj files are written to the same folder, and so the outputs from compiling those two source files are colliding. I think there are at least two possible solutions:

1. Use a different output directory (build directory) for each input folder
2. Create custom object file names for each (or just one) of your source files

I'm not certain about the first option, but for the second, you should be able to right-click the source file in the solution explorer, select "Properties", and find some configuration setting to over-ride the output (.obj) file created for that source file.

Visual studio 2010 cannot find executable (after upgrade from 2008)

[SOLVED]

VS 2010 apparently handles the project configurations differently than VS 2008. Having the output path hardcoded in the 2008 configurations caused confusions for 2010. I have replaced the hardcoded paths with VS defaults (using variables instead) and the problem was solved

Is it possible to have identically named source files in one visual studio c++ project?

You are right, by default all object files are put into the same directory and their filenames are based on the source file name. The only solution I can think of is to change conflicting file's output file path in here:

Project Properties-C/C++-Output Files-Object File Name http://img37.imageshack.us/img37/3695/outputfile.png

PS. It sounds like the lecturer has a crappy (probably written by the lecturer himself) automatic code verifier that imposes this restriction. To get extra marks, offer to rewrite the parser so it works with normal/sane/non-weird projet layout.

Source directories in Visual Studio 2010

If you want to compile sources using Visual Studio, you will have to add them to your project.
There is nothing wrong about adding external sources to your project in a nice filter.

You can also create a makefile to be used by Visual Studio which will list sources you need.

MSVC10 /MP builds not multicore across folders in a project

The use of %(RelativeDir) in "Object File Name" ( in the vcxproj XML, /Fo on the CL.exe command line ) project causes msbuild to batch the cpp files to cl.exe on a per directory basis. This can have a significant impact on the benefits gained from using /MP.

Note that if your project uses %(RelativeDir) for object files its likely that the configuration is trying to avoid colliding .obj files that from cpp files with the same name in different folders.

The /Fo command line parameter is typically a folder that the compiler dumps the obj files into - there is only ONE passed, so all of the cpp files for a given directory can only be passed to CL.exe at a time.

That was a pain - but I'm glad there is a reason and a solution. Hope it helps.

---

Update

A team mate found that anytime an MSBuild parameter is sent to CL.exe it seems to break or severely limit /MP. This is most likely because for /MP to work well the top level CL.exe needs to have a bundle of cpp files.

Our solution was to not use any msbuild params ( I think its the %params% ) for 'Object File Name'. This required that we rename some cpp files so they did not collide.

Hope this has changed in VS2012 or VS2013.

Cannot open Visual Studio 2008 files after installing 2010

Mea culpa! The failing solution files were not even 2008, they were VS 2005, which I no longer have on my machine. I thought that they were 2008 files.

It's interesting though that you do not get the option to convert them to 2008 and you are forced to go straight to 2010 format.

Sorry for misleading you.

---

Related Topics