Visual studio generator support

[stonier]

Currently supporting cmake builds via the nmake generator.

Test, validate and work out if we need to do more to support the ms express/visual studio generators.

[stonier]

Added a commented call for the visual studio generator in 6cd552e

[stonier]

Just tried this with MS Express 2010. It works, but there are some outstanding issues.

• It dumps everything in bin/Debug and bin/Release etc etc. Nothing will work like this.
  • You have to copy across all exes into the bin folders, then it works.
• Catkin's add_library macro to copy across dll's to C:\work\build\bin does not work.
• No idea how to get debuggable instances to run yet.
• Release has no debugging symbols, debug fails to work (our rosdeps are release versions)
  • But we can create a release with debug info like cmake does (put notes on the wiki).

Is it really worth going down this route? Cmake -> Visual Studio is painful, especially as the number of projects increases.

[BrianCook]

Yes, it's worth it!

I'm currently working with a 64-bit build of hydro on win_ros on Windows 8.1 with Visual Studio 11. It seems to be working but it would be extremely helpful if it supported the Visual Studio generator. Working in the visual environment is FAR easier and faster than from the command line.

I have not found it painful at all for large numbers of projects. E.g. OpenCV samples come in a single CMakeLists.txt with about 130 projects. These generate to Visual Studio and work with no problem at all.

Please let me know if any suggestions on how to modify it. I don't mind nmake for all normal ROS builds and commands. I just want to be able to generate a visual studio solution to work in as I am writing/compiling code, so it doesn't really matter if it copies files correctly or not.