VS 2008: Project Dependencies and Build Order all out sync, plugin available?

Question

Hi there,

I have quite a large project, actually 2 but they share a lot of projects between each other. The problem being when i compile from NOTHING i.e. no dll's in my common bin dir it fails..

This is due to the fact that some projects are not compiling before others that are dependent on them.

I have fixed it manually going through them and it now works

But i was wondering if there was some sort of plugin or trick to force a READ of the solution and build the dependencies and build order correctly?

Also its a mystery that some projects had a tick next to some projects in the project dependencies dialog and others not, any idea why?

Why did VS 2008 decide to say "hey thats a dependency on that but that isn't when it is" :-) ?

Any ideas really appreciated

Answer 1

If you rightclick on your project you can go to Project Dependencies and check off what projects your current project depends on. Also you can right click and go to Project Build Order to see the order in witch your projects build.

Answer 2

VS will try and infer the build order from the references of each project. If project A contains a reference to B then B will be built before A. Usually this works reasonably well. If your projects have a dependency that's not expressed as a reference then VS will not pick it up. For example if you're using a dependency injection container then you may not want/need explicit project references.

As Bruce points out the solution in this case is to set dependencies and the build order manually.