Can I link to the MFC 11 toolset in Visual Studio 2022?

Hello @Wayne Steinhour ,

Can I link to the MFC 11 toolset in Visual Studio 2022?

Unfortunately, no. Microsoft doesn't include toolsets that old in modern IDE distributions, so there's no direct way to install it.

Try building your project using v141, v142, or v143 platform toolsets and test if the third-party library still works. MFC has maintained some binary compatibility across versions, particularly with runtime linking. There are no guarantees with libraries compiled against MFC 11, so testing is essential.

You should also check with the third-party library vendor to see if they have a version compiled against a more recent MFC version.

If you can access the third-party library's source code, rebuild it against MFC in VS 2022.

I hope this clarifies and happy holidays.

Visual Studio 2022 does not natively support linking to the MFC 11 toolset (which corresponds to Visual Studio 2012). However, you can use the Visual Studio 2019 toolset (v142) to build your legacy code that relies on MFC 11. This approach allows you to maintain compatibility with the older MFC version while taking advantage of the newer development environment in Visual Studio 2022.

To do this, you would need to install Visual Studio 2019 alongside Visual Studio 2022 and configure your project to use the v142 toolset. This way, you can compile your legacy code with the appropriate MFC version while still working within the Visual Studio 2022 interface.