SignFile task in MSBuild: Can we make it faster?

Question

I have MSbuild task like this to sign all the output modules of our project.

    <SignFile Condition="Exists('$(OutputPath)\%(FilesToSign.identity)')"
      CertificateThumbprint="$(THUMBPRINT)"
      SigningTarget="$(OutputPath)\%(FilesToSign.identity)"
      TimestampUrl="http://timestamp.verisign.com/scripts/timestamp.dll" />

It takes quite a while (10 minutes or more) when I have many files. It is possible to run stuff in parallel or in other ways speed it up. (I am trying to sign more than 100 files.. )

Answer 1

The only way to do parallel build with MsBuild is to have different instances of msbuild, thus different project files, I don't think that's recommended here. You cannot do task or target in parallels, yet you can build project in parallel (but you can create several project files with one target in each). You may have precision here : http://stackoverflow.com/questions/997047/how-to-run-tasks-in-parallel-in-msbuild .

Moreover, I think you will be limited by your disk access speed and not by your memory.

I don't know the SignFile task enough to give advice on how optimize it, though, sorry.