Project templates in Visual Studio 2022

After configuring C and C++ projects countless times, base on these settings, I finally bit the bullet and created a reusable template in Visual Studio 2022. And it’s surprisingly simple: create the project and then go Project → Export Template.

The project name itself can be used inside files with $safeprojectname$ string. In order to have it replaced even inside .rc files, edit the .vstemplate and add:

<TemplateContent>
  <Project TargetFileName="ayylmao.vcxproj" File="ayylmao.vcxproj" ReplaceParameters="true">
    <ProjectItem ReplaceParameters="true">RES\$safeprojectname$.rc</ProjectItem>
  </Project>
</TemplateContent>

There’s no GUI for deleting a template, though. One must manually remove the zip files from two different locations:

• Documents \ My Exported Templates
• Documents \ Templates \ Project Templates

To restore a template, simply copy the zip back to:

• Documents \ Templates \ Project Templates

The Rust doc_cfg fiasco

In WinSafe, Cargo features are used extensively to gate the DLL modules which are currently implemented. This is good because you specify only the modules you need, reducing your compiler effort. The Rust documentation doc_auto_cfg unstable feature was extemely useful, applying tags on each entity specifying the required feature for it.

Then, at some point of October 2025, doc_auto_cfg was merged into doc_cfg. And it’s now completely broken.

I filled an issue at the official repo. I’m not the only one missing that feature, but no one seems to care. This is so demotivating I stopped WinSafe development completely.

I found a workaround by pinning the compiler version using rust-toolchain.toml, along with the last version where doc_auto_cfg works, which I painfully found out:

[toolchain]
channel = "nightly-2025-09-27"
components = ["rust-docs"]
targets = ["x86_64-pc-windows-msvc"]

With the above file, the command line to generate the docs is:

RUSTDOCFLAGS="--cfg docsrs" cargo doc --all-features

Or even better, directly specify the toolchain the command line:

RUSTDOCFLAGS="--cfg docsrs" cargo +nightly-2025-09-27 doc --all-features

This compiler has the 1.92.0-nightly version, and it seems I’m gonna using for a long time.

Windows 10 SDK 10.0.20348.0 is gone

I was caught by surprise today after updating Visual Studio 2022 to version 17.14.11. All my projects failed to compile, because the SDK files disappeared. I first thought something broke with VS Code support, but then I saw that Visual Studio itself had the same problem.

Turns out the Windows SDK I was using – 10.0.20348.0 – was simply deprecated and removed in this update, according to here, and the release note itself. Indeed, Visual Studio Installer won’t show it anymore.

Apparently, now I’ll have to install a Windows 11 SDK, even if I’m running Windows 10. I hope this doesn’t break my stuff.

Non-movable and non-copyable C++20 classes

On my fantastic journey implementing WinLamb v2, I’m diving deep into C++20, grasping a lot of concepts I never understood before, and having a lot of fun along the way.

One of the things that I implemented was the idea of non-copyable and non-movable classes, at first, using macros. This felt inelegant, so I implemented P2895 paper with utility classes. It ultimately failed with the nested ListView classes, so I discarded the idea too.

My final solution was to = delete move constructor, which will prevent all copy and move. The hard rules are not particularly easy to memorize, so I’ll let them here for further reference:

1. The two copy operations are independent. Declaring copy constructor does not prevent compiler to generate copy assignment and vice versa. (Same as in C++98.)
2. Move operations are not independent. Declaring either one of them prevents the compiler to generate the other. (Different from copy operations.)
3. If any of the copy operations is declared, then none of the move operations will be generated.
4. If any of the move operations is declared, then none of the copy operations will be generated.
5. If a destructor is declared, then none of the move operations will be generated. Copy operations are still generated for reverse compatibility with C++98.
6. Default constructor generated only when no constructor is declared. (Same as in C++98.)

Example:

class Foo {
private:
	Foo(Foo&&) = delete; // non-copyable, non-movable
};

Ibanez Wizard profile history

Since I’m on the market for a “battle” RG guitar to play with bands, I reminded a change that happened to the fretboard width of Wizard necks, from 56 to 58mm. According to Rich, it happened back in 2005.

Digging a bit more, I found more information about the Wizard neck profile history, which I compiled in the table below:

Neck	Width	Thick	Radius
Original Wizard	43/57mm	17/20mm	17"
Pre-2005
Super Wizard	43/56mm	17/19mm	17"
Wizard	43/56mm	18/20mm	17"
Post-2005
Super Wizard	43/58mm	17/19mm	17"
Wizard	43/58mm	18/20mm	17"

Using VSCode for C++ projects

For a long time I thought I only could use Visual Studio to write C++ programs on Windows, because MSVC toolchain requires some particular initializations before being able to run.

Turns out there is a way to smoothly run all the MSVC machinery from within VSCode. The answer is the same I found last year in automating MSVC builds: we need a .bat file to call MSVC’s own .bat, then we invoke VSCode executable right after.

call "C:\Program Files\Microsoft Visual Studio\2022\Enterprise\VC\Auxiliary\Build\vcvars64.bat"
"C:\apps-portable\VS Code\Code.exe"

Save this .bat somewhere, and put a shortcut to it in your start menu, naming it “VSCode MSVC” or something like that.

To my surprise, multiple things work better in VSCode than in Visual Studio itself:

• file navigation;
• file creation and deletion;
• code and comment folding;
• keyboard shortcuts;
• error reporting – VSCode highlights in red the files with errors, while in Visual Studio I have to build the project and look at the output to see which files are broken.

Perfect non-locking string winding

While searching my future Ibanez RG Prestige, I found this StewMac video of how to properly wind the strings around the tuning machines:

I remember having seen this technique before, but this time I’m keeping the reference.

Single target dir for all Rust projects

Rust, just like C++, generates a lot of output files when you build an executable. Particularly, when writing my programs with WinSafe, I use the library straight from a sibling directory, so I can test any changes right away – the side effect is that all those output artifacts are generated repeatedly for each new program.

So I’ve just tested the target-dir global option for Cargo, which will use a single target directory for all projects. This would, in theory, prevent the constant rebuilding of WinSafe artifacts.

Since the output dir changed, I had to also change the deploy.sh scripts to point to the new location. Other than that, everything seemed to work as intended, and I’m pretty satisfied with the results.

This is now my global ~/.cargo/config.toml file:

# https://github.com/rust-lang/cargo/issues/3381#issuecomment-710388554
[net]
git-fetch-with-cli = true

# https://redd.it/1dua24f
# https://blog.rust-lang.org/2023/11/09/parallel-rustc.html
[build]
target-dir = "D:\\Stuff\\Core\\rs\\_target"
#rustflags = ["-Z", "threads=8"]
# Change default toolchain:
# rustup show
# rustup default nightly-x86_64-pc-windows-msvc
# rustup default stable-x86_64-pc-windows-msvc

As an extra benefit, when I want to clean the target directory, now I just need to delete the single _target one.

Previewing Go package documentation

While developing Windigo, I’m using the auto-generated docs at pkg.go.dev. It’s not perfect, but it’s something.

I didn’t know, however, a way to preview the generated docs while still developing the library.

Go 1.25 brought a new go doc option which allows us to preview the documentation by creating a temporary, virtual server. It downloads a whole bunch of packages, builds them, and then effectively displays the current docs:

go doc -http

This is being a game changer, I can now preview all the documentation instantly. Thanks to this guy who told me that.

Install PKCS#11 drivers, Linux

I need the PKCS#11 USB token at work, and every time I spin a new Linux VM, I need to install it again. But I never remember what needs to be done. So I’m documenting the steps here.

First, download the latest driver at GlobalSign, unzip and install it. The installation will probably fail because of missing dependencies; the second command will install them followed by the original package:

sudo dpkg -i foo.deb
sudo apt-get -f install

Once you reboot, the SafeNet icon will appear in the tray.

To install support for Brave browser, see here.

Brave cookies whitelist

I’ve been wasting way too much time, multiple times, looking for Brave’s cookie whitelist setting. So I’ll just leave it here, for reference to my future self. I found the reference on this Reddit post.

The settings are buried in:

• Settings
• Privacy and security
• Site and Shields Settings
• Content
• Additional content settings
• On-device site data
• Customized behaviors

Or, this direct link:

brave://settings/content/siteData

Goodbye Chrome

Today, Google Chrome officially disabled uBlock Origin extension. We can no longer enable it through any flags. I’ve been waiting for this moment to come for a while, and so it happened.

Today I finally uninstalled Google Chrome from my Windows computer.

Firefox is still my default browser, but I just installed Brave, which has the Chromium engine, because I have a feeling that it’s more performant than Firefox. However, I also have a feeling that Chrome itself is faster than Brave. Maybe Google has some code removed from Chromium and added only in Chrome, to intentionally make Chrome faster. Conspiracy theory, but who knows.

I used the portable version of Brave which felt strangely slow. I supposed that’s because I installed it on my D: drive, which is not SSD. Brave could not open magnet links, and so far, this new installation also cannot.

On my Android phone, I already have both Firefox and Brave. My issue with Brave is that it doesn’t support extensions, and SponsorBlock is become something I can’t live without.

Another issue is the disk space used by Chrome and Brave. My observations showed me that they top at somewhat 2.7 GB, which seems a lot. Coincidence or not, I also observed this for Firefox. My C: hard drive is running short these days, and until I buy myself a new computer, that’s all I have.

At last, I joined the bandwagon of the ex-Chrome users.