Hello,

Just switched over last week to IDE2(yes, rather late) and the new Solutions/Projects Intellisense format.
I am making extensive use of Macro Defines under the Project Properties - Project Global Defines. 
Like: CVA$BINIDENT="SLAVE";WiFiSlaveClient=1;DEBUG_MODE=1;

As I understand, these are stored now in the project's .vcxproj file, not anymore in .<project>.vsarduino.h
Under IDE1.x the macro is shown as: #define CVA$BINIDENT "SLAVE"

What happens with IDE2, using the macro CVA$BINIDENT in source code, Intellisense shows: SLAVE, without double quotes, in contrast with the previous I-format, warning: SLAVE is not defined. Which is correct because it should be a String.
Checking .vcxproj indeed the entry for the config/platform says: CVA$BINIDENT=SLAVE;
Next: changing it manually in CVA$BINIDENT="SLAVE", reopening the solution, same problem, quotes are deleted.
It is not possible to convert SLAVE in code to "SLAVE", cause the one is an undefined variable and the other a const String.

Currently my bundle of 5 projects and 12 libs is now halted because these main settings prevent successful postbuild steps.
Detail: in the postbuild hooks the binary build output is renamed, using a.o. the CVA$BINIDENT value and copied to a common location.
I have not been able to "google" any complaints about this, so I would like to hereby report a (possible) bug, and any advice is much appreciated.

Finally I tested this with a simple minimal testproject with just 1 string define, same result.

Could you:
Reproduce it
Confirm the problem, or regard it as "new functionality"
Advise a solution?

Kind regards
Johan

Attached: Verbose build output Word doc, and a .vcxproj project file in text format.

VS 2019 Community up-to-date
VM: 2026.422.1901

Thanks for the explanation Tim
It looks indeed something fishy is going on.

Regarding the use of .arduino.h: Because in this .h appeared all the macro definitions from the Project Properties I was under the assumption this was the location.
When using the specific macro in any (sub)project of the solution, the reference came directly from the .h file, e.g. when using Goto Definition.

Anyway, 
As I don't see any button for an attachment(like in the first message) I paste it below:
If you want I could just send a new post with the attachment.

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let's not discuss the vsarduino.h it's not relevant.

We tested this and didn't see the quotes being removed from the project.

However for intellisense and potentially the correct string passing we defined global defines like this

ss$abc=\"test\";ss$abc2=\"test2\"


unrelated....

I also noticed some confusion in your project file. did you mean to include a share project this way? sounds same as your actual project.
..\ESP8266_EVALTEST\ESP8266_EVALTEST.vcxitem

Actually no. I didn't have to add the slash and quoted strings saved fine to the project for me

However in my serial print test it wouldn't compile without having escaped the string

I dont have any idea why the quotes are being stripped for you. 

Using shared projects are not immediately Arduino IDE compatible, unless the sources are combined into the single project. Visual Micro ensures the #includes in shared projects remain capable of a source merge. There is a menu item that creates a zip with the merged sources. 

They can be included in source control easy enough but more difficult if the solution is in the same folder as the source code

Sorry i wasn't clear. The Arduino ide doesn't know about shared projects. That's all I meant. The code is certainly Arduino compatible in all other respects (including how includes work).

You mentioned publishing the code for others. Non vs users have to combine the code into the single folder structure. Same code.  can also use the \src sub folder and folders below that. it shouldn't require changes to "includes" if it combined properly.

The restrictions are only when we consider users who don't use visual micro. There are many ways in Visual Micro to keep sources together. From a source control point of view. The "Portable" section of the docs might or might not be useful for you.

https://www.visualmicro.com/page/User-Guide.aspx?doc=index