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I'm working with a legacy product build environment that depends on (among other things) Microsoft Visual Studio .Net 2003. We're updating our build environment to use 64-bit machines, since our latest releases require it. But we'd like to also build the old project on the new machines.

The legacy build scripts are hard-coded to look for the command-line build tool at C:\Program Files\Microsoft Visual Studio .NET 2003\Common7\IDE\devenv.com. Unfortunately, on the 64-bit machines, MSVS 2003 always gets installed to C:\Program Files (x86)\Microsoft Visual Studio .NET 2003. Since the build scripts don't know about that extra (x86), the build fails. Updating the build scripts is not an option for this project, since only critical fixes are allowed.

I've reinstalled MSVS 2003 a couple of times, to verify that I can't just force it to install in the non-x86 path, but no luck. The WOW64 redirection always takes over and forces it to the x86 path. I don't think a simple drag-and-drop directory move is going to work either, since there are lots of references in the registry to the x86 path.

Any suggestions? Or am I stuck supporting the old build machines for another couple of years until the product reaches end-of-life?

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I would think changing the build scripts would qualify as a critical fix, if not doing so prevents you from building the product successfully. – tcrosley Feb 15 at 23:55
Doesn't prevent it, just prevents us from getting rid of the legacy build machines. Management is perfectly fine with maintaining two build machine images. Eliminating the old ones is just very, very desirable (at least for me!) – Lemur Feb 16 at 0:34

closed as off topic by Walter, Glenn Nelson, MichaelT, gnat, Kilian Foth Feb 16 at 8:43

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1 Answer

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The solution is simpler than it would appear. Just put a symlink to the actual directory where the build scripts expect it.

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Symlinks on Windows! I never knew! Had it up and working in 5 minutes. Thanks! – Lemur Feb 16 at 0:56
No problem glad it worked for you. – Mike Brown Feb 17 at 2:56

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