visual_studio_legacy

Generates a file named conanbuildinfo.vsprops containing an XML that can be imported to your Visual Studio 2008 project. Note that the format of this file is different and incompatible with the conanbuildinfo.props file generated with the visual_studio generator for newer VS.

Generated xml structure:

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="Windows-1252"?>
<VisualStudioPropertySheet
    ProjectType="Visual C++"
    Version="8.00"
    Name="conanbuildinfo"
    >
    <Tool
        Name="VCCLCompilerTool"
        AdditionalOptions="{compiler_flags}"
        AdditionalIncludeDirectories="{include_dirs}"
        PreprocessorDefinitions="{definitions}"
    />
    <Tool
        Name="VCLinkerTool"
        AdditionalOptions="{linker_flags}"
        AdditionalDependencies="{libs}"
        AdditionalLibraryDirectories="{lib_dirs}"
    />
</VisualStudioPropertySheet>

This file can be loaded from the Menu->View->PropertyManager window, selecting “Add Existing Property Sheet” for the desired configuration.

Note that for single-configuration packages, which is the most typical, conan install Debug and Release packages separately. So a different property sheet will be generated for each configuration. The process could be:

Given for example a conanfile.txt like:

[requires]
Pkg/0.1@user/channel

[generators]
visual_studio_legacy

And assuming that binary packages exist for Pkg/0.1@user/channel, we could do:

$ mkdir debug && cd debug
$ conan install .. -s compiler="Visual Studio" -s compiler.version=9 -s arch=x86 -s build_type=Debug
$ cd ..
$ mkdir release && cd release
$ conan install .. -s compiler="Visual Studio" -s compiler.version=9 -s arch=x86 -s build_type=Release
# Now go to VS 2008 Property Manager, load the respective sheet into each configuration

The above process can be simplified using profiles (assuming you have created “vs9release” profile), and you can also specify the generators in the command line:

$ conan install .. -pr=vs9release -g visual_studio_legacy