Visual Basic 2005 in a Nutshell, Third Edition

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Appendix HCommand-Line Compiler

H

The Visual Basic Command-

Line Compiler

Although the Visual Studio Integrated Development Environment (IDE) is an effi-

cient tool for developing your VB applications, you can actually do all of your

development in Notepad (a.k.a. “Visual Notepad”) and compile the source code

from the Windows command prompt. This appendix details the operation of the

Visual Basic compiler, vbc.exe.

Compiler Basics

The compiler uses command-line switches to control its operation. A command-

line switch is designated by a slash or hyphen, followed by a keyword. If the

keyword takes an argument, it is separated from the keyword by a colon (

:). For

example:

vbc sample1.vb /target:library

indicates that the compiler should generate a library (a DLL file) as the output

target file type. In this case, target is the switch keyword and library is the argu-

ment. If multiple arguments are required, they are usually separated from one

another by commas (unless otherwise noted). For example:

vbc sample1.vb /r:system.design.dll,system.messaging.dll

references the metadata in the system.design.dll and system.messaging.dll

assemblies.

The minimal syntax required to compile a file named sample1.vb is:

vbc sample1.vb

This generates a console-mode application named sample1.exe. You can specify ...