   [.net] Linking DirectX and Visual Studio .Net 2003
  Hello!As of now I'm a fairly inexperienced programmer. After learning the foundations of C++ programming I've decided to try my hand at DirectX programming. Things seem to be going fairly well on the learning side of things, however I'm having a little trouble practicing due to problems setting up a programming environment.I'm using Visual Studio .Net 2003 (and know very little about it, in truth). I've installed the DirectX 9 SDK, but I'm a little unsure how to link DirectX and .Net from here.At the moment, whenever i use a DirectX header file or library i need to copy and paste the header/library file into the projects folder (with the main .cpp file). Is there anyway around this, say someway to link the DirectX folders to the project?Thankyou for everything!   
  This completely depends on what you're trying to develop in.  If you want to stick with DirectX and C++, then you shouldn't have any troubles following any of the millions of tutorials or books out there.  If you want to go with Managed DirectX and .NET (C++/CLI, C#, VB.NET, etc), however, it's a completely different story.To my knowledge, Managed DirectX moved to .NET 2.0 a while ago. So unless you're able to develop in .NET 2.0 in Visual Studio 2003, you'll have some problems.  Do yourself a favour and get a free copy of VS2005 Standard or download VS2005 Express and use that.  If you choose to go with C#, SharpDevelop is a nice alternative open-source IDE.   