Accessing Visual Studio macros from source code?
Visual Studio has macros like $(TargetDirectory), $(OutputPath) etc.
In my source code, I want to specify a relative path for the loading of a file from a folder a few levels below the TargetDirectory.
Currently I'm doing this: mLayer = mEngine->AddLayer("D:\\Projects\\abc.osg"); and I want it to be something like mLayer = mEngine->AddLayer(($TargetDirectory)+"..\\..\\abc.osg");
It's just a temporary requirement, so that I can give my code to a person for a small demo, and his TargetDirectory is differently aligned wrt my directories. Is there any way to make use of the Visual Studio macros in source code? (at least I know that System environment variables can be accessed)
Answer
Go to Project Properties -> Configuration Properties -> C/C++ -> Preprocessor -> Preprocessor Definitions and add the following:
TARGET_DIRECTORY=LR"($(TargetDir))"
This defines a wide string literal named TARGET_DIRECTORY that contains the contents of the $(TargetDir) macro. The important thing here is that this creates a C++ raw string that does not treat backslashes as escape characters. Paths contain backslashes. Using a regular string literal would be incorrect and would even give you compiler errors in some cases.
Important!
If you use a macro that may contain a closing parenthesis followed by double quotation marks )" you must use an additional delimiter, that cannot occur in the macro value, for example:
TARGET_DIRECTORY=LR"|($(TargetDir))|"
In the case of windows file system paths this is not necessary because paths cannot contain double quotation marks.