C++ Global _CRT_SECURE_NO_WARNINGS

Apr 16, 2012 in BLOG
c# msbuild
1 min read

I became extremely annoyed by thousands of these messages while running MSBuild:

c:\Program Files (x86)\Microsoft Visual Studio 10.0\VC\include\string.h(105) : 
see declaration of 'strcpy' SomeFile.cpp(###): 
warning C4996: 'strcpy': This function or variable may be unsafe. 
Consider using strcpy_s instead. To disable deprecation, use _CRT_SECURE_NO_WARNINGS. 
See online help for details.

I looked for the online help, which doesn’t really exist for this specific warning. I did find the Security Features in the CRT article, but that was useless. Because I’m working on a shared project, I didn’t want to manually add this #define to every project. The workaround is to add it to the *.user.props file.

Add the ItemDefinitionGroup node below to C:\Users\Jschubert\AppData\Local\Microsoft\MSBuild\v4.0\Microsoft.Cpp.Win32.user.props:

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8"?> 
<Project DefaultTargets="Build" ToolsVersion="4.0"
         xmlns="http://schemas.microsoft.com/developer/msbuild/2003">
  <ItemDefinitionGroup>
    <ClCompile>
      <PreprocessorDefinitions>_CRT_SECURE_NO_WARNINGS;%(PreprocessorDefinitions)</PreprocessorDefinitions>
    </ClCompile>
    <ResourceCompile>
      <PreprocessorDefinitions>_CRT_SECURE_NO_WARNINGS;%(PreprocessorDefinitions)</PreprocessorDefinitions>
    </ResourceCompile>
  </ItemDefinitionGroup>
</Project>

And there you have thousands of annoying warnings disappear.

Because MSBuild always includes %(PreprocessorDefinitions) when chaining PreprocessorDefinitions, you can add any number of defines here to exist globally on your machine only.

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