How to exclude a ino/pde file from Arduino projects

Question

I would like to be able to exclude from the auto-including process of the current project (without renaming the extension or delete it) a sketch with pde or ino extension that is used in certain circumstances only.

How can I do this?

I currently use Visual Micro to manage projects on Arduino.

Answer 1

One possible approach is to guard the body of that sketch with an #ifdef ... #endif pair, and use Visual Micro's "Project Properties" to define (or not) a preprocessor symbol. [If the .ino or .pde in question is used as a #include file, you would instead guard all the #include instances.]

Refer to the "Project Defines" page at visualmicro.com for how to define a preprocessor symbol and its value. [Via: Tools> Options> Visual Micro> Compiler> Show Build Properties] Also see How do I add additional compiler switches in Visual Studio.

If necessary, you can use other tests besides #ifdef to control compilation. The first link above shows the following example.

#if USBPORT > 3
....your code here....
#endif