How do include paths work in Visual Studio

Question

Visual Studio drives me crazy and I am suspecting I am doing something wrong   This is what I do  I installed Visual Studio  Pro  08  a long time ago  I installed the Windows SDK  Win 7 x64   someone emails me a project  it fails to build   Invariably  it can not find windows h  While it is easy enough to include C  Program Files Microsoft SDKs Windows v7 0 Include in the project settings of every single project  I feel that this may not be the proper way to do it  Is there a way to somehow make Visual Studio globally aware of these files  I also tried to include the above directory in the path variable but that didn t change anything   Also  it will randomly find windows h but not winresrc h in the same directory   Edit  It was a problem with my machine  Somehow  Visual Studio thought that my Windows SDK was in the wrong place  See accepted answer and comments for the fix

User · Answer

To use Windows SDK successfully you need not only make include files available to your projects but also library files and executables  tools   To set all these directories you should use WinSDK Configuration Tool

User · Answer

To resume the working solutions in VisualStudio 2013 and 2015 too   Add an include-path to the current project only  In Solution Explorer  a palette-window of the VisualStudio-mainwindow   open the shortcut menu for the project and choose Properties  and then in the left pane of the Property Pages dialog box  expand Configuration Properties and select VC   Directories  Additional include- or lib-paths are specifyable there   Its the what Stackunderflow and user1741137 say in the answers above  Its the what Microsoft explains in MSDN too    Add an include-path to every new project automatically  Its the question  what Jay Elston is asking in a comment above and what is a very obvious and burning question in my eyes  what seems to be nonanswered here yet   There exist regular ways to do it in VisualStudio  see CurlyBrace com   what in my experience are not working properly  In the sense  that it works only once  and thereafter  it is no more expandable and nomore removable  The approach of Steve Wilkinson in another close related thread of StackOverflow  editing the Microsoft-Factory-XML-file in the    program files    - directory is probably a risky hack  as it isnt expected by Microsoft to meet there something foreign  The effect is potentally unpredictable  Well  I like rather to judge it risky not much  but anyway the best way to make VisualStudio work incomprehensible at least for someone else   The what is working fine compared to  is the editing the corresponding User-XML-file      C  Users UserName AppData Local Microsoft MSBuild v4 0 Microsoft Cpp Win32 user props   or and     C  Users UserName AppData Local Microsoft MSBuild v4 0 Microsoft Cpp x64 user props   For example    lt  xml version  1 0  encoding  utf-8   gt   lt Project DefaultTargets  Build  ToolsVersion  4 0  xmlns  http   schemas microsoft com developer msbuild 2003  gt     lt ImportGroup Label  PropertySheets  gt     lt  ImportGroup gt     lt PropertyGroup Label  UserMacros    gt     lt PropertyGroup gt       lt IncludePath gt C  any-name include   IncludePath  lt  IncludePath gt       lt LibraryPath gt C  any-name lib   LibraryPath  lt  LibraryPath gt     lt  PropertyGroup gt     lt ItemDefinitionGroup   gt     lt ItemGroup   gt   lt  Project gt    Where the directory    C  any-name include    will get prepended to the present include-path and the directory    C  any-name lib    to the library-path  Here  we can edit it ago in an extending and removing sense and remove it all  removing thewhole content of the tag    Its the what makes VisualStudio itself  doing it in the regular way what CurlyBrace describes  As said  it isnt editable in the CurlyBrace-way thereafter nomore  but in the XML-editing-way it is   For more insight  see  Brian Tyler MSDN-Blog 2009  what is admittedly not very fresh  but always the what Microsoft is linking to

User · Answer

This answer will be useful for those who use a non-standard IDE  i e  Qt Creator    There are at least two non-intrusive ways to pass additional include paths to Visual Studio s cl exe via environment variables    Set INCLUDE environment variable to  -separated list of all include paths  It overrides all includes  inclusive standard library ones  Not recommended  Set CL environment variable to the following value   I C  Lib VulkanMemoryAllocator src  I C  Lib gli  I C  Lib gli external  where each argument of  I key is additional include path    I successfully use the last one

User · Answer

RichieHindle solution is now deprecated as of Visual Studio 2012  As the VS studio prompt now states       VC   Directories are now available as a user property sheet that is added by default to all projects     To set an include path you now must right-click a project and go to   Properties VC   Directories General Include Directories   Screenshot

User · Answer

You need to make sure and have the following    include  lt windows h gt    and not this    include  windows h    If that s not the problem  then check RichieHindle s response

User · Answer

This answer only applies to ancient versions of Visual Studio - see the more recent answers for modern versions   You can set Visual Studio s global include path here   Tools   Options   Projects and Solutions   VC   Directories   Include files

User · Answer

If you are only trying to change the include paths for a project and not for all solutions then in Visual Studio 2008 do this  Right-click on the name of the project in the Solution Navigator  From the popup menu select  Properties  In the property pages dialog select Configuration Properties- C C   General  Click in the text box next to the  Additional Include Files  label and browse for the appropriate directory  Select OK   What annoys me is that some of the answers to the original question asked do not apply to the version of Visual Studio that was mentioned

[windows] How do include paths work in Visual Studio?

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