Just wanted to pass on this VS.NET tip that you might find useful.
In the External Tools menu, I have added two commands:
Command Prompt in Solution
Command Prompt in Project
They are pretty simple to add, but valuable nonetheless. Here is how to add them.
Title: Command Prompt in Solution
Command: C:\WINDOWS\system32\cmd.exe
Arguments: /k ""C:\Program Files\Microsoft Visual Studio 8\VC\vcvarsall.bat"" x86
Initial Dir: $(SolutionDir)
Title: Command Prompt in Project
Command: C:\WINDOWS\system32\cmd.exe
Arguments: /k ""C:\Program Files\Microsoft Visual Studio 8\VC\vcvarsall.bat"" x86
Initial Dir: $(ProjectDir)
The only difference of course being the initial directory, but it’s worth mentioning that the Arguments passed to the command processor will ensure that the environment variables for the .NET Framework get set correctly so that you can run compiler and other framework tools.