How To Build VGMTrans? - loveemu labo

It is not so much difficult, but there are several points need to care.

This document targets VGMTrans_src_and_bin_9_29_09. Situation might be different when you try any other versions.

Requirements

Visual Studio 2008
- Express Edition is okay, but it will require some additional installations. If you can use higher edition (Professional Edition, for instance), you should definitely use it.
- Visual Studio 2010 can work fine, but you will need to rebuild static library of TinyXML*1, or you will encounter LNK2019 error (details). Precompiled VS2010 Dependencies
Windows SDK (should be included in Visual Studio, I used v7.1)
DirectX SDK (August 2007)
- The above is the final version that contains DirectMusic.
WTL (7.5 and 8.0 worked)
TinyXML (2.5.3 is included in VGMTrans source code package, but the latest version 2.6.2 works just fine too)

At least you need to download and install DirectX SDK and WTL. Both of those libraries can be installed by running setup executable, and adding include/library paths to Visual Studio. Visual Studio 2010 does not have "VC++ Directories" category, so that you need to configure it in VGMTrans.vcxproj(.user), or edit Microsoft.Cpp.Win32.user.props to have those paths, just like the following.

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8"?> 
<Project DefaultTargets="Build" ToolsVersion="4.0" xmlns="http://schemas.microsoft.com/developer/msbuild/2003">
 <PropertyGroup>
  <ExecutablePath>$(ExecutablePath)</ExecutablePath>
  <IncludePath>$(IncludePath);C:\WTL80\include;C:\Program Files\Microsoft DirectX SDK (August 2007)\Include</IncludePath>
  <ReferencePath>$(ReferencePath)</ReferencePath>
  <LibraryPath>$(LibraryPath);C:\Program Files\Microsoft DirectX SDK (August 2007)\Lib\x86</LibraryPath>
  <SourcePath>$(SourcePath)</SourcePath>
  <ExcludePath>$(ExcludePath)</ExcludePath>
 </PropertyGroup>
</Project>

Note that you must not add those paths before Windows SDK path, or you will see an error C2061: syntax error : identifier '__RPC__out_xcount_part'

Additional Requirements for Visual Studio 2008 Express Edition

Unfortunately, Express Edition requires more installation because it lacks ATL support. Though I have never tried to use Express Edition, some anonymous developers tried the following things and solved the problem. Nice find.

Microsoft Windows Server 2003 Driver Development Kit (for ATL headers, installation steps are the same as DirectX SDK)
Edit VGMTrans Project Properties (from Visual Studio)
- General → Use of ATL: Dynamic Link to ATL
- C/C++ → Languages → Force Conformance In For Loop Scope: No
- Linker → Input → Additional Dependencies: add "shlwapi.lib"

*1:TinyXML 2.5.3 is included in VGMTrans source code package, but the latest version 2.6.2 works just fine too. I recommend a newer version.