Automating MSVC builds

While rewritting a few of my personal tools from Rust back to C++, I found myself willing to automate the build process. At first, I tried to invoke MSVC’s cl compiler directly, but it has proven to be absolute hell to do.

Eventually I stumbled upon the marvellous MSBuild tool, which is capable of understanding the .sln file and take all compiler and linker options from it:

msbuild foo.sln /p:Configuration=Release /p:Platform=x64

With that, I finally had the script to automate one build:

call "C:\Program Files\Microsoft Visual Studio\2022\Enterprise\VC\Auxiliary\Build\vcvars64.bat"
set APP="vscode-font-patch"
msbuild %APP%.sln /p:Configuration=Release /p:Platform=x64
move /Y x64_Release\%APP%.exe "D:\Stuff\apps\_audio tools\"
rmdir /S /Q x64_Release
pause

Then it was time to automate the release build of all my listed projects:

@echo off
call "C:\Program Files\Microsoft Visual Studio\18\Professional\VC\Auxiliary\Build\vcvars64.bat"

call :Deploy "id3-fit"
call :Deploy "sync-folders"
call :Deploy "yt-dl"

pause

:Deploy
cd .\%~1
msbuild %~1.slnx /p:Configuration=Release /p:Platform=x64
move /Y x64_Release\%~1.exe .\
rmdir /S /Q x64_Release
cd ..
goto :eof

The main point is that :Deploy is a function, with %~1 being the first argument, and goto :eof being the return statement. All functions must appear after the code itself.