Appendix C: Using QEF on Microsoft Platforms

This chapter describes setting up and using QEF on Microsoft Windows platforms. QEF provides a number of tools and facilities to make it easier to manage larger projects on this platform.

C.1) MIDL, Precompiled Header Files, and DLLs

The qsg script program has support for a number of Windows facilities. Most of these are provided via the qsg program script. In program(x-qsg) see the descriptions for the y, Y, P, and R flags.

y: Create a dll.
Y: Name the installation directory for the dll.
P: Name the file to use to generate a precompiled header file.
R: Register the constructed file are installation.

If program is invoked for a *.[oi]dl file, the qsg script midl is invoked to create the scripts to construct the header, type library and interface identifier files.

If program is invoked for an *.rc file with a V flag, the qsg script verinfo is invoked to build a special Version Info resource which is linked with program.

The x-qsg entry for program has a section on other MicroSoft considerations.

Two special tools are provided to facilitate creating windows applications:

rc The resource compiler provided by Interix.

wcci Unix like interface to CL.EXE and LINK.EXE.

C.2) Working with Visual Studio

Visual Studio is an Integrated Development Environment that provides many facilities for building and debugging applications for Windows platforms. QEF supports VS through the qmsdev command. Once you have created your object tree with mkqtree, cd into the directory where you wish to work and run qmsdev. This will create a VS project (.dsp) file and workspace (.dsw) file. You can now open these files in Visual Studio and work as you normally would. When VS does a build, it will run qef instead of using its default build mechanism.

C.3) Targeting Different Environments

The Windows platform provides a number of targets for which you can build applications. The simplest is console-mode applications. To build these using QEF no special options need to be set. Windows-mode and MFC applications are supported by the WIN_APP option. ActiveX/Active Template applications are supported by the WIN_ATX option.

x050.qh - 9.4 - 03/10/27