Visual C++ 6 Unleashed

By MICKEY WILLIAMS and David Bennett

• Table of Contents
  • Copyright
  • About the Authors
  • About the Contributors
  • Acknowledgments
  • Tell Us What You Think!
  • Introduction
  • How to Use This Book
  • What You Need to Use This Book
  • What's New in Visual C++ 6.0
  • Contacting the Main Author
  • Part I: Introduction
  • Chapter 1. The Visual C++ 6.0 Environment
    • Developer Studio
    • The Project Workspace
    • The Workspace Window
    • Project Configurations
    • Converting Older Projects
    • Working with Multiple Projects
    • Working with Resources
    • Editing Resources
    • MFC AppWizard
    • ClassWizard
    • Component Gallery
    • Integrated Debugger
    • Command-Line Tools
    • Other Tools
    • Summary
  • Part II: MFC Programming
  • Chapter 2. MFC Class Library Overview
  • Chapter 3. MFC Message Handling Mechanism
  • Chapter 4. The Document View Architecture
  • Chapter 5. Creating and Using Dialog Boxes
  • Chapter 6. Working with Device Contexts and GDI Objects
  • Chapter 7. Creating and Using Property Sheets
  • Chapter 8. Working with the File System
  • Chapter 9. Using Serialization with File and Archive Objects
  • Part III: Internet Programming with MFC
  • Chapter 10. MFC and the Internet Server API (ISAPI)
  • Chapter 11. The WinInet API
  • Chapter 12. MFC HTML Support
  • Part IV: Advanced Programming Topics
  • Chapter 13. Using the Standard C++ Library
  • Chapter 14. Error Detection and Exception Handling Techniques
  • Chapter 15. Debugging and Profiling Strategies
  • Chapter 16. Multithreading
  • Chapter 17. Using Scripting and Other Tools to Automate the Visual C++ IDE
  • Part V: Database Programming
  • Chapter 18. Creating Custom AppWizards
  • Chapter 19. Database Overview
  • Chapter 20. ODBC Programming
  • Chapter 21. MFC Database Classes
  • Chapter 22. Using OLE DB
  • Chapter 23. Programming with ADO
  • Part VI: MFC Support for COM and ActiveX
  • Chapter 24. Overview of COM and Active Technologies
  • Chapter 25. Active Documents
  • Chapter 26. Active Containers
  • Chapter 27. Active Servers
  • Chapter 28. ActiveX Controls
  • Part VII: Using the Active Template Library
  • Chapter 29. ATL Architecture
  • Chapter 30. Creating COM Objects Using ATL
  • Chapter 31. Creating ActiveX Controls Using ATL
  • Chapter 32. Using ATL to Create MTS and COM+ Components
  • Part VIII: Finishing Touches
  • Chapter 33. Adding Windows Help
  • Part IX: Appendix

The Project Workspace

Working with the Developer Studio is based on working with Project workspaces. These workspaces represent a particular set of projects, which can be anything from a single application, to a function library, to an entire suite of applications. Each workspace may include any number of different projects that you want to group into a single workspace so that you can work closely with each separate project at the same time.

The project workspace (.dsw) file is responsible for maintaining all of the information that defines your workspace and the projects that you have included in it. Each workspace contains one or more projects, with each project using a project (.dsp) file. Previ ously, you might have used make (.mak) files to maintain projects and the processes involved in creating your applications. Developer Studio 6.0 does not create .mak files by default anymore, although you can force Developer Studio to create a makefile based on current project settings by using the Export Makefile command from the Project menu. This is useful if you are using .mak files to automate your builds outside of Developer Studio.

In addition to makefile-type information about your projects, the project workspace file includes information about the settings you have chosen for Developer Studio itself. This means that whenever you open a project workspace, all of the Developer Studio settings that you had when you last worked with this workspace will be restored. All of the windows that were open before will also be opened and returned to their previous position in the workspace.

You can create a new, empty workspace using the Workspaces tab of the File, New dialog box. However, an empty workspace isn't generally of much use, unless you want to configure a project from scratch. You may create a new workspace whenever you create a new project from the Projects tab of the File, New dialog box. This will present you with several different choices, as shown in Figure 1.2.

Figure 1.2 New Projects dialog box.

When you create a new project, Visual C++ will set up default build settings for the type of project you specify here. You may also start up one of the Application Wizards from this dialog box. You will see exactly what each of these project types will do for you later in this chapter.

With all of this talk about workspaces, perhaps you would expect that Developer Studio would provide a nice graphical interface to this information. Well, sure enough, it does—the Workspace window.

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