Is bscmake needed using Visual Studio 2010?

Question

I'm wondering if bscmake is still needed for Visual Studio 2010 C++ Projects using unmamanged/managed code.

My understanding of bscmake is, that it is generating browse-files for each cpp-file in order to be able to use things in visual studio like the "class view" or "go to definition",...

But after asking a question about bscmake myself and reading other similar questions I was unsure what bscmake is for and why you should use it. References:

• How to get rid off “BSCMAKE error BK1500: Internal error” compile errors
• LINK : fatal error LNK1000: Internal error during BuildLibrary

So my question is:

• Is there any need to activate bscmake?
• Advantages/Disadvantages activating bscmake?

Answer 1

bscmake seems no longer be supported for VS2010, see this bug reports: Per-project Browsing in VS2010 and BSC files cannot be used. So you can speed up your compile times by turning off the creation of SBR/BSC files, as they are useless anyway.

BSC files had the big advantage that they could be used to browse external libraries which were not part of your solution (MFC for example). This seems not be possible with intellisense. I personally use VisualAssist as a replacement (which works quite well for me).