How to create a non-Fortran project in the IDE?

[ferrad01]

As part of our build process, we have a bunch of .FLG text files which are "compiled" (using our own tool) into binary FLB files for release.

I want to add the building of these FLB files to my main build solution (which consists of only Fortran projects at the moment). How do I add a non-Fortran project (ie. my own "compile", no link) to the main solution?

[Steven_L_Intel1]

Perhaps you can use a custom build step. Add the FLG files to the project. Right click on them and select Properties, Custom Build Step. Here you can set the command to be invoked to "build" the file, a description, and the output file name (this is useful if one of the other sources depends on this.) You can also add a Build Event > Pre-Build Event to the project to invoke any set of commands you want.

[ferrad01]

I tried this, but it didn't work well. In the end I created a Makefile project under VC++ and added it to the solution. I then created makefile text files which contain all the dependencies, rules, etc.

[Jugoslav_Dujic]

I have quite a few projects which use custom build rules. Most of those are like yours (building using custom tools), and even more complex (code parsers & generators, which "feed" the generated source into other compilable projects). There are certain limits of what you can do with them (compared with makefiles), but they do the job fairly well.

I find slightly annoying that Visual Studio does not have a project type "Custom project", which does not make anything by default. VC++ (VS2010 at least) "Empty project" and "Makefile project" seem closest to that.