Is it possible (and how) to use VS2015 IDE to build native C++ projects using the compiler, linker, the STL and everything else that comes with VS2008?
What I'm trying to do is called "C++ Native Multi-Targeting" and is known that e.g. VS2012 allows usage of VS2008 (v90) toolset, for C++ projects, via Project Properties->Configuration Properties->General->Platform Toolset=v90. Normally, out-of-the-box v90 will not be available, but will appear if you make side-by-side installations of VS2008+VS2010+VS2012 or VS2008+win7.1sdk+VS2012.
But I couldn't find so far any reported attempts at bridging the bigger gap between vs2008 and vs2015 for C++ projects. According to MSDN it seems that officially it's not supported. But I'd like to know if it might work anyway.
for reference, platform toolset values are:
Visual Studio .NET 2002 (Platform Toolset = 'v70')
Visual Studio .NET 2003 (Platform Toolset = 'v71')
Visual Studio 2005 (Platform Toolset = 'v80')
Visual Studio 2008 (Platform Toolset = 'v90')
Visual Studio 2010 (Platform Toolset = 'v100')
Visual Studio 2012 (Platform Toolset = 'v110')
Visual Studio 2013 (Platform Toolset = 'v112')
Visual Studio 2015 (Platform Toolset = 'v114')
It should be possible. I have tried it but MSBuild fails with the following message:
1>C:\Program Files\MSBuild\Microsoft.Cpp\v4.0\Platforms\Win32\Microsoft.Cpp.Win32.Targets(57,5): error : Required file "" is missing.
The only solution I have found so far was to add the following line in vcxproj file:
<PropertyGroup Label="Globals">
...
<TrackFileAccess>false</TrackFileAccess>
</PropertyGroup>
Disadvantage: Always a complete build for every change