Install WinCE 5.0 Platform Builder SDK - build code with Visual Studio 2012 or higher

Question

I have a Windows CE 5.0-based Platform Builder image. It is intended to be installed on Visual Studio 2005. My team would like to upgrade our build tools to utilize Visual Studio 2012, but Visual Studio 2012 does not support this platform image.

To be clear; I am not asking whether or not Visual Studio 2012 (or higher) supports Platform Builder SDKs targeting Windows CE 5.0. That question has already been answered (more or less), and the answer is clearly "No."

Instead, what I'd like to do is install the Platform Builder SDK, and manually modify the Visual Studio 2012 environment to allow compilation of my Windows CE code. Features like remote debugging and deployment are acceptable losses to my team; we have our own pathway for deployment and debugging on our embedded device. What I'm really hoping to gain is simply the ability to build WinCE 5.0 code in VS2012, which was intended for VS2005. I am attempting to reduce the number of Visual Studio installations, and get access to the superior intellisense faculties of newer versions of Visual Studio.

Does anyone know if this is possible? How would I go about doing that?

Answer 1

There does not appear to be a way to do this, in such a fashion as to no longer require Visual Studio 2005.

You can, however, use registry hacks to force Visual Studio 2012 to build a WinCE 5.0 project by utilizing the compiler binaries from Visual Studio 2005, during compilation. This would allow you to develop code in VS2012, but would also require that VS2005 be installed for a successful build.

Here is an article explaining the steps to set this up.

Answer 2

VS2012 doesn't have any of the Windows CE compilers. The last one that shipped with compilers compatible with CE 5.0 was VS 2008, so that's the "latest" version you'll be able to use to build. (VS2012 is capable of building for Windows CE, but only for WEC 2013, and only after installing a WEC 2013 SDK, which includes the requisite compiler pieces).

In short, there's no way you can get VS2012 by itself to compile a CE 7.0 or earlier app.

There is a plug-in for VS 2013 that will allow you to use that IDE for managed code (I've never used it, so I can't say how well it works), but it still requires VS 2008 to be installed to get the compilers.