Intel® Fortran Compiler 17.0 Developer Guide and Reference
The Visual Studio* integrated development environment (IDE) consists of one or more projects contained within a solution. A solution can contain multiple projects. For example, if you have several Fortran applications that do different calculations, but are related to the same research application you are working on, you can store all the individual projects in a single solution. Along with a solution file (.sln), the IDE creates a solution user options (.suo) file for storing IDE customization.
The following table summarizes the files created by Visual Studio* when you create a new project:
File |
Extension |
Description |
|---|---|---|
Project Solution file |
.sln |
Stores solution information, including the projects and items in the solution and their locations on disk. |
Project file |
.vfproj .vcxproj |
Contains information used to build a single project or subproject. |
Solution options file |
.suo |
Contains IDE customization for your solution, based on options you select. |
Directly modifying these files with a text editor is not supported.
Before you open Compaq* Visual Fortran 6.0 projects or Intel® Visual Fortran 7.x projects in Visual Studio*, review the guidelines listed in Converting Projects.
Each project can specify one or more configurations to build from its source files. A configuration specifies such information as the type of application to build, the platform on which it is to run, and the tool settings to use when building. Having multiple configurations lets you extend the scope of a project but still maintain a consistent source code base from which to work.
When you create a new project, Visual Studio* automatically creates Debug and Release (also known as Retail) configurations for you. The default configuration is the Debug configuration. To specify the current configuration, select Configuration Manager from the Build menu.
You can specify build options in the Project > Properties dialog box, for one of the following:
For all configurations (project-wide).
For certain configurations (per configuration).
For certain files (per file).
For example, you can specify certain kinds of compiler optimizations for all configurations in general, but turn them off for certain configurations or certain files.
Once you have specified the files in your project, the configurations that your project is to build, and the tool settings for those configurations, you can build the project with the commands on the Build menu.
For a multiple-project solution, make sure that the executable project is designated as the startup project (shown in bold in the Solution Explorer view). If not, right click on the project and select Set as StartUp Project.