= What is =

Microsoft Visual Studio 2003 and newer versions of that popular programming environment support what is called "Makefile Project". That kind of project can carry complex file trees and the rules for building, re-building and clearing the project but reality in this kind of project the file tree is just a convenience and the rules are merely a command line script to prepare calls to "nmake.exe". 

= Features =

Code completion, IntelliSense, "Go to definition”, "Go to declaration" and step by step debugging works almost as good as in a regular Visual Studio Project.

= How to use =

To use GDAL’s Visual Studio Makefile Projects you can use "File/Open/Project..." to load directly makegdal71.vcproj or makegdal80.vcproj for Visual Studio 2003 and 2005 respectively. Then check the configuration and select one of the build option from the "Build" menu.

Note: You can also add those projects to existing Visual Studio Solution.

= Configuration =

To change GDAL build options open and edit "nmake.opt" from "Solution Explorer/makegdal/Make Files/nmake.opt". Follow the instruction in the  [wiki:BuildingOnWindows previous page].

You can change the calls to "nmake" by opening and editing "Project Properties/NMake".

You can either change the debugging option on "Project Properties/Debugging".

= Update =

The .vcproj files are constantly updated but not automatically so it is possible that the file tree could be missing a new driver or a new utility source code in GDAL but that will not going to affect the compilation. 

If you want to generate a updated version of the project file or if you want to generate project files to a newer version of Visual Studio you can run the batch script “makegdal_gen.bat “ as follows:

{{{
C:\Dev\gdal>makegdal_gen
Usage: makegdal_gen "MS Visual C++ version" > makegdalNN.vcproj
Examples:
   makegdal_gen 7.10 > makegdal71.vcproj
   makegdal_gen 8.00 > makegdal80.vcproj
}}}