Using NuGet to manage external dependencies in Visual C++ builds

Managing builds for large C++ projects using Visual Studio has always been difficult. Keeping track of all of your external dependencies whether they are internally produced or third party can be a nightmare. Usually you end up having to store all of your required lib and header files in your source control repository. Other systems have had tools for to handle this, such as Maven or CMake. But there was nothing that worked well with Visual C++ and MSBuild. Now since version 2.5, NuGet supports MSBuild and C++ projects, making it possible to manage your dependencies by version directly in the IDE. This talk will cover how to set up NuGet for Visual C++ projects, how to build your own native code NuGet packages, and how we were able to implement these tools at RealTick/EzeSoft.

Chris Wundram is an Architect at the Eze Software Group in the RealTick/EMS division. He has 20+ years experience with C++ development for the Windows platform. He has spent a lot of time working to improve the build and deployment process for the C++ projects RealTick produces, so that we can take advantage of new development processes like continuous integration and continuous deployment.

The EZE Software Group will not only be providing the speaker and the meeting location for this event, but they will also be providing food and drinks. Plus they assure us that the air-conditioning will be turned on and operating at full blast.