How do I compile C programs using Vim's 'make' command with Visual Studio's compiler on Windows 7?

Question

I'm trying to set up Vim to user VS (express) C compiler cl.exe. Adding

set makrprg='c:\Program Files (x86)\Microsoft Visual Studio 10.0\VC\bin\cl.exe'

(I've tried escaping with \\, \\\, \\\\ just to be sure) to my _vimrc file and invoking :make % returns the following:

:! myfile.c >C:\Users\gvkv\AppData\Local\Temp\VIe7BF5.tmp 2>&1

and the loads myfile.c into VS's IDE! Even if cl.exe needs its environment:

C:\Program Files (x86)\Microsoft Visual Studio 10.0\VC\bin\vcvars32.bat

this is still strange and I have no idea how to proceed.

Answer 1

Judge Maygarden's solution is correct up to proper escaping and solved the Vim problem I had but there were a couple of other issues that I had to resolve to make things work. In particular

1. cl.exe requires the correct environment as well as the correct path; i.e., adding C:\my\path\to\cl isn't sufficient. Otherwise you will get errors reporting on missing DLLs. The solution is to run vcvars32.bat (or any other batch file which sets up a similar environment) and cl as a single command.

2. cmd requires any paths with spaces to be double quoted but you can't escape them with \ because :! ... treats \ literally; instead, you must double quote the double quote, ""....

So, for completeness I thought I'd post my actual solution. In Vim (or _vimrc):

:set makeprg=\"\"Program\ Files\ (x86)\\Microsoft\ Visual\ Studio\ 10.0\\VC\\bin\\vcvars32.bat\"\&\&cl\"

and then you can simply call

:make %

and you're done.

This method is easily generalizable for any compiler. Also, as devemouse's answer suggests, creating a makefile for nmake is probably the best way to go about doing things for any non-trivially sized project (I wanted a Vim-only solution that suits my current work).