Here’s a howto for setting build environment variables within Visual Studio itself. Given that I’ve seen plenty of projects that used system wide environment variables for project level settings, I suspect this will be of use to other developers as well.

1. From the menu: View > Other Windows > Property manager.
2. Right click on Property Manager, add Property Sheet.
3. Double click on the just created Property Sheet.
4. Click on User Macros.
5. Click Add Macro.
6. Add the build variable’s name and value. Check “Set this macro as an environment variable in the build environment”.

References

• MSDN entry: How to: Add New Property Sheets to C++ Projects
• MSDN entry: Add User Macro Dialog Box
• Forum Topic Discussing this subject