Ways to reduce application building/debugging time

Question

My new office project is based on an MVP design and is in VB.NET (.NET 3.5), using multiple libraries (like EntLib, internal corporate framework, etc.). The number of DLLs used as references is so huge (almost 50) that when I try to build/debug the application in VS2008, it takes almost 3-4 minutes to get the website running successfully.

Wanted to know if there are any settings/areas which upon some modifications can help me reduce the build time? and what exactly can be the major reasons behind this long loading duration?

Thanks!

Answer 1

There may be several reasons for slow compilation times and no one is going to give you one definite answer. Instead, you should try measuring build times with different settings and experiment a little. You didn't specify enough details about the project, but it maybe worth checking:

• any time consuming build event
• are you generating xml documentation for your assemblies
• maybe you can reference some assemblies from GAC instead of copying them locally to output directory

These are just few suggestions. If you are, or can upgrade, to VS2010 then I would also suggest getting VSCommands 2010 plugin which will show you detailed information about build times of your projects:

You can also set it up to cancel build when first project fails which is a great time saver too!