Is there a way to run an outside executable after a solution is built in Visual Studio 2008?

Question

I'm not talking about a post build event for a project. Rather, I want to run an executable automatically after the entire solution is built. Is there a way to do a post build event for the solution?

Answer 1

not directly.
you can make a project which has a dependency in all other projects and add a post build step to it. Effectively this will cause it to run after everything else.

Answer 2

Yes, you can do this in the Macro Editor by handling OnBuildDone. The event gives you a couple of handy properties you can check: scope (project/solution/batch) and action (build/rebuild/clean/deploy). To do what you want would be something like this (not tested, mind):

Public Sub AfterBuild(ByVal scope As vsBuildScope, ByVal action As vsBuildAction) Handles BuildEvents.OnBuildDone
    If scope = vsBuildScope.vsBuildScopeSolution Then
        System.Diagnostics.Process.Start("some file I want to run")
    End If
End Sub