Posts tagged Windows Forms
How to: Migrating a CLR console Visual C++ project to Windows Forms
- 17 December 2012
Note: Windows Forms programming in new development is discouraged by Microsoft at this point as Microsoft wants to make full use of hardware accelerated drawing instead of using the CPU-intensive GDI. But maintaining old Windows Forms code in Visual C++ 2012 is still supported, GDI isn’t going anywhere anytime soon. Visual C++ 2012 removed the Windows Forms project template and I see people scramble to find ways to create a Windows Forms project. There is a walkaround that’s been around for years, that is, to convert a CLR console application to a Windows one, then add forms related code to the project. The basic steps are listed at http://support.microsoft.com/kb/317433, conveniently named “How to suppress the console window for a managed extensions to Visual C++ Windows Forms application”. Yes, the need to convert a C++ console application to windows forms is that old, back all the way back in the managed extensions for C++ days. So what I need to do to add Windows Forms support to a C++/CLI console application? Of course the System.Windows.Forms.dll reference is missing in a new console application, so I need to reference it: