Just a small trick I wanted to share. As I mentioned in my last post, I often launch the command-line via shortcut with a script (shell.bat) that initialises the environment for working on a specific project. This shortcut is usually pinned to the start menu so I have easy access.
For the sake of completeness, here is an example of the shell.bat script for a VC++ SDL project targeting x64.
@echo off set scriptsDir=%~dp0 cd /d %scriptsDir%.. :: uncomment the line below line to debug the vcvars :: set VSCMD_DEBUG=1 call "C:\Program Files (x86)\Microsoft Visual Studio\2017\Community\VC\Auxiliary\Build\vcvars64.bat" set path=%scriptsDir%;%path% :: Add dependencies to our include and lib paths (used by cl.exe) set INCLUDE=%scriptsDir%..\external\sdl\include;%INCLUDE% set LIB=%scriptsDir%..\external\sdl\lib\x64;%LIB%
However, I want to be able to switch between multiple projects with relative ease. Rather than have multiple shortcuts, or having to manually update one shortcut whenever I change projects, I decided to use an environment variable containing the working directory of the active project. I can do this because each project has the same directory layout, with a shell.bat file residing in the scripts directory. Following this idea, the fields of the shortcut become:
Target: %windir%\system32\cmd.exe /k .\scripts\shell.bat
Start In: %ActiveProject%
I then made little script I could use to set the %ActiveProject% environment variable by passing the project directory as a parameter.
@echo off if [%1]==[] goto usage setx ActiveProject %1 goto :eof :usage @echo Usage: %~n0 ^<Directory^> pause goto :eof
I placed a shortcut to this script in %AppData%\Microsoft\Windows\SendTo. This lets us pass a directory as a parameter to the script via the Send to explorer context menu.
This makes my life much easier 🤓
