Conan: Visual Studio addon

[memsharded]

Opening this issue to centralize efforts and reference towards a VS addon for conan.

For current workarounds around VS 2017 + CMake, read: https://github.com/conan-io/conan/issues/778#issuecomment-359437587

Also to resolve the use case of @bschindler in https://github.com/conan-io/conan/issues/2327: can't use single-config packages + find.cmake + IDE

[ForNeVeR]

Well, I've already commented on #778 and I'll add my comment here: we're working on the plugin in the bincrafters repo (check out the docs and file issues, you're welcome!). Currently we've implemented integration of visual_studio_multi generator with vcxproj that semi-automatically calls conan install for each of the project configurations and adds the resulting prop file to the vcxproj.

Current plans include CMake-based project support (i.e. no vcxproj?) and adding a GUI to search and administer packages similar to NuGet one.

I'm ready to discuss any additions or plans for this plugin or any other plugins community might want to create.

[memsharded]

@ForNeVeR That is great!

I suggest then interested users to contribute and give feedback in: https://github.com/bincrafters/conan-vs-extension

Maybe at some point it would be good to make it an official plugin, automate updates, releases, etc, and provide support also from our side. Lets keep talking.

Thanks very much for taking this effort.

[luckielordie]

+1 on this. I know something like this would help get support for Conan around our office.

[wpalfi]

In the meantime, there are two other options to run conan install from VS:

• Using Visual Studios "External Tools" feature
  See my comment here: https://github.com/conan-io/conan/issues/2147#issuecomment-352412557

• With CMake: Add optional targets that can be triggered manually. Note how this is different from conan_cmake_run.
  CMake add_custom_target(CONAN_INSTALL conan install ${CMAKE_CURRENT_SOURCE_DIR}/conan COMMAND cmake ${CMAKE_CURRENT_BINARY_DIR}) add_custom_target(CONAN_INSTALL_DEBUG conan install ${CMAKE_CURRENT_SOURCE_DIR}/conan -s build_type=Debug COMMAND cmake ${CMAKE_CURRENT_BINARY_DIR})

[SSE4]

@jgsogo should we close this one now?

[jgsogo]

Yes, sure, I think that every effort or comment related to a Visual Studio extension should be redirected to its own repo now that it is officially supported by us: https://github.com/conan-io/conan-vs-extension

Thanks to everyone for making it a real option to start using Conan 🎉 🎉 🎉