title: Visual Studio (C++)- what is the best practice regarding directories configurations?
body: <p><em>(I'm using VS 2010 but most of the info is relevant at least down to VS 2003, perhaps with slight differences in the organization/layout of the build configuration menus\GUI)</em></p>
  
  <p>When configuring a project build, there is a section named <strong><em>"VC++ Directories"</em></strong> that contains 6 labels. 2 of them are:</p>
  
  <ol>
  <li><strong>Library Directories</strong></li>
  <li><strong>Include Directories</strong></li>
  </ol>
  
  <p>In addition, if you go to <strong>'C/C++' -> 'Additional Include Directories'</strong> , you can specify additional directories, that AFAIK (from the descriptions of these directories in MSDN and VS help) is identical to 'Include Directories' (though there is probably some search order between them). Likewise, if you go to <strong>'Linker' -> 'Additional Library Directories'</strong> you can specify additional paths for libraries to link with the project (here the description is more precise- "Allows the user to override the environment library path", so these paths are searched sooner).</p>
  
  <h2>My question is-</h2>
  
  <p>is there a reason to use one (of the paths) over the other? what is the best practice?  </p>
  
  <p>Please relate in your answer to using the property pages features (which adds flexibility to the configuration of different projects and allows to easily reuse existing ones but are causing me more confusing regarding the best practice here). 
  Thanks in advance.</p>