Finding version of Microsoft C++ compiler from command-line (for makefiles)

Question

I must be missing something really obvious, but for some reason, the command-line version of the Microsoft C++ compiler (cl.exe) does not seem to support reporting just its

Answer 1

Create a .c file containing just the line:

_MSC_VER

or

CompilerVersion=_MSC_VER

then pre-process with

cl /nologo /EP .c

It is easy to parse the output.