Msbuild consumes memory, hangs creating folder and copying linked files

Question

aHello!

My msbuild script (v3.5) has recently started behaving very strange. I build the entire solution at once that has 110+ projects. The build seems to run normal but then gradually slows down to halt with 1hour+ per project and consuming 500+MB memory. It started happening with no apparent reason to be the cause (a code update after which this condition has started was really minor).

Running with diagnostic verbosity shows that the build executes _CopyOutOfDateSourceItemsToOutputDirectory target and repeatedly copies same linked file:

Copying file from "C:\STProjects\dmi\code\src\AppSettings.config" to "C:\stprojects\dmi\code\bin\Tests\App1.Test\AppSettings.config".
Copying file from "C:\STProjects\dmi\code\src\AppSettings.config" to "C:\stprojects\dmi\code\bin\Tests\App1.Test\AppSettings.config".
Copying file from "C:\STProjects\dmi\code\src\AppSettings.config" to "C:\stprojects\dmi\code\bin\Tests\App1.Test\AppSettings.config".

Project link file snippet:

<ItemGroup>
    <Content Include="..\AppSettings.config">
      <Link>AppSettings.config</Link>
      <CopyToOutputDirectory>PreserveNewest</CopyToOutputDirectory>
    </Content>

Also it took about 15mins to the output folder. Log:

Creating directory "C:\stprojects\dmi\code\bin\Tests\App1.Test\".

Any help with this will be truly appreciated.