I'm not really following. Just add the other library's project to the solution?

> or autoincrementing the version in the resource file

There are probably multiple solutions, but off the top of my head you can add pre/post build steps to a project, so you can invoke a script that will autoincrement the version for you.

> Or when you import and very old VC++ project and the auto conversion process only sort-of fixes things?

I agree, this sometimes causes problems. When that happens, creating a new project from the existing source code can be better than trying to fix the imported project.

> VS works great out of the box using the Wizard, but the learning curve gets real steep right after that.

As far as IDEs go, I feel VS is tolerable. I agree there is a learning curve once you start customizing your project, but in my opinion it's not as steep as it is in Eclipse, for example.