What was the project file type of Visual C++ back in the 1990s?

Question

Is there anyone out there who remembers what was the file extension used by Microsoft Visual C++ way back in early days (1995-1998 or so) to hold a C++ project? This would be around the days of Visual C++ 5.0/6.0, I think

(Currently, they use .vcxproj but it's changed a few times over the years.)

I just found a disc with stuff I worked on back then that I'd like to build. I see the .H, .CPP, .RC files, etc. but nothing resembling a project file. None of the following extensions exist anywhere in the source tree: .dsp, .sln, .mdp .vcproj, .vcxproj

I do see a .MAK file but I seem to recall never using it back then and instead doing everything through the IDE. I don't know if my memory is faulty or not. Wasn't there some other project file extension in use around then?

(If I must, I can just create a project around this source, but I think this thing had some custom build steps in the project which I'd like to look at)

Answer 1

Very early (1995) versions of C++ were released under the name "Visual C++ Workbench" there was only one file created for the project. Both versions 1.52 and 2.0 used an extension ".mak".

Answer 2

Visual Studio 6 uses two files, .dsp and .dsw.

The .dsp file is the project but doesn't store what files were open, etc., so VC6 chides you for trying to double click that file and instead recommends the .dsw (workspace) file. I'm pretty sure that VC5 used the same pair of files, but cannot check.