visual studio .vcxproj changes to generate exe

Question

In my project there are multiple subdirectories, out of which one is utils, and utils.vcxproj has details like below:

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8"?>
<Project DefaultTargets="Build" ToolsVersion="14.0" xmlns="http://schemas.microsoft.com/developer/msbuild/2003">
  <ItemGroup Label="ProjectConfigurations">
    <ProjectConfiguration Include="Debug|x64">
      <Configuration>Debug</Configuration>
      <Platform>x64</Platform>
    </ProjectConfiguration>
    <ProjectConfiguration Include="Release|x64">
      <Configuration>Release</Configuration>
      <Platform>x64</Platform>
    </ProjectConfiguration>
  </ItemGroup>
  <PropertyGroup Label="Globals">
    <ProjectGuid>{1705D35F-B357-4C31-A45C-D18AD75D9325}</ProjectGuid>
    <Keyword>Win32Proj</Keyword>
  </PropertyGroup>
  <Import Project="$(VCTargetsPath)\Microsoft.Cpp.Default.props" />
  <PropertyGroup Condition="'$(Configuration)|$(Platform)'=='Debug|x64'" Label="Configuration">
    <PlatformToolset>v140</PlatformToolset>
  </PropertyGroup>
  <PropertyGroup Condition="'$(Configuration)|$(Platform)'=='Release|x64'" Label="Configuration">
    <PlatformToolset>v140</PlatformToolset>
  </PropertyGroup>
  <ImportGroup Label="PropertySheets">
    <Import Project="$(SolutionDir)PABuildConfig_StaticLibrary.props" />
  </ImportGroup>
  <Import Project="$(VCTargetsPath)\Microsoft.Cpp.props" />
  <ImportGroup Label="ExtensionSettings">
  </ImportGroup>
  <ImportGroup Label="PropertySheets" Condition="'$(Configuration)|$(Platform)'=='Debug|x64'">
    <Import Project="$(UserRootDir)\Microsoft.Cpp.$(Platform).user.props" Condition="exists('$(UserRootDir)\Microsoft.Cpp.$(Platform).user.props')" Label="LocalAppDataPlatform" />
  </ImportGroup>
  <ImportGroup Label="PropertySheets" Condition="'$(Configuration)|$(Platform)'=='Release|x64'">
    <Import Project="$(UserRootDir)\Microsoft.Cpp.$(Platform).user.props" Condition="exists('$(UserRootDir)\Microsoft.Cpp.$(Platform).user.props')" Label="LocalAppDataPlatform" />
  </ImportGroup>
  <PropertyGroup Label="UserMacros" />
  <ItemGroup>
    <ClCompile Include="case.c" />
    <ClCompile Include="checksum.c" />
    <ClCompile Include="codeword.c" />
    <ClCompile Include="convdate.c" />
    <ClCompile Include="dbm_log.c" />
    <ClCompile Include="escape.c" />
    <ClCompile Include="exparamutil.c" />
    <ClCompile Include="filelist.c" />
    <ClCompile Include="filelist_win32.cpp" />
    <ClCompile Include="file_get.c" />
    <ClCompile Include="get_time.c" />
    <ClCompile Include="hooklist.c" />
    <ClCompile Include="list.c" />
    <ClCompile Include="ntharg.c" />
    <ClCompile Include="nthline.c" />
    <ClCompile Include="search.c" />
    <ClCompile Include="set.c" />
    <ClCompile Include="stradd.c" />
    <ClCompile Include="strlist.c" />
    <ClCompile Include="strtrim.c" />
    <ClCompile Include="tail.c" />

  </ItemGroup>
  <ItemGroup>
    <ClInclude Include="convdate.h" />
    <ClInclude Include="dbm_log.h" />
    <ClInclude Include="filelist.h" />
    <ClInclude Include="hooklist.h" />
    <ClInclude Include="list.h" />
  </ItemGroup>
  <Import Project="$(VCTargetsPath)\Microsoft.Cpp.targets" />
  <ImportGroup Label="ExtensionTargets">
  </ImportGroup>
  

</Project>

Output of compilation is utils.lib

Now I wanted to add one more extra file say cvalidate.c in same subdirectory, but this should not be part of utils.lib and post compile, it should generate cvalidate.exe

I was able to achieve this on Linux platform, where I successfully generated executable cvalidate by adding changes in makefiles, but I am new to Windows concepts of Visual studio .vcxproj file.

So wanted to know what changes should I add in utils.vcxproj file. I added entry like below but it did not served the purpose:

   <ClCompile Include="cvalidate.c">
        <ExcludedFromBuild>false</ExcludedFromBuild>
    </ClCompile>
    <Link Include="cvalidate.c">
        <SubSystem>Console</SubSystem>
        <OutputFile>cvalidate.exe</OutputFile>
        <AdditionalDependencies>utils.lib</AdditionalDependencies>
    </Link>

Answer 1

You need to create another project (vcxproj) in the same solution (sln). Each project build one binary, you can also specify dependencies between project of the same solution.