Visual studio: change reference paths?

Question

I am trying to build an old C# project in VS Community 2017 and receive the following error:

C:\Users\shrout\source\repos\MyFirstNppPlugin\MyFirstNppPlugin\DllExport\NppPlugin.DllExport.targets : warning : Cannot find lib.exe in 'C:\Program Files (x86)\Microsoft Visual Studio\2017\Community\Common7\IDE\\..\..\VC\bin'.

• Is there a method by which I can point VS 2017 to a different directory for lib.exe?
• If I create a Community\VC\bin directory and put lib.exe into it the build progresses past this point
• The lib.exe file I am using is currently located in C:\Program Files (x86)\Microsoft Visual Studio\2017\Community\VC\Tools\MSVC\14.12.25827\bin\Hostx64\x64
  • I would prefer to point VS at this directory instead of the one being referenced, but don't know where to make that change.

Extra Info: I am trying to build a sample NotePad++ plugin from the following page:

Sample Plugin from SourceForge

Answer 1

As the error states, the reference is made from the NppPlugin.DllExport.targets file, which in turn is referenced from your project.

Given it's a project file and not a system-wide file, you can simply change the reference path in the .targets file.