Use vcxproj instead of Cmake for internal vcpkg port

Question

We have some libraries written in Visual Studio that we would like to share with other projects in different solutions in different repos.

I liked the idea of using an internal vcpkg registry to distribute those libraries to those other solutions/projects.

My concern here is that the libraries we'd like to share are vcxproj projects, and I believe vcpkg requires "ports" (packages) to be Cmake projects.

Is my understanding correct? If we want to expose those libraries via an internal vcpkg registry we'd have to convert those projects to Cmake projects?

user_2137996 · Answer

Vcpkg has built-in support for wrapping MSBuild (ie. sln/vcxproj) projects. See the function vcpkg_install_msbuild

Many projects still use the deprecated vcpkg_build_msbuild, though. Using git grep I can find a few portfiles that will work as examples:

gsoap: https://github.com/microsoft/vcpkg/tree/master/ports/gsoap
winpcap: https://github.com/microsoft/vcpkg/tree/master/ports/winpcap
unrar: https://github.com/microsoft/vcpkg/tree/master/ports/unrar
libfabric: https://github.com/microsoft/vcpkg/tree/master/ports/libfabric (this one uses the new helper)

Use vcxproj instead of Cmake for internal vcpkg port

1 Answers