Does anyone know how to disable the background compiler for VB in VS2008?
For my sins I have to work on a large VB.NET project and it often locks up for 20 seconds at a time whilst doing the very helpful background compilation which is extremely frustrating.
I'd rather work blind between compiles and be able to do some work.
No there is no way to disable the background compiler.
Have you installed Visual Studio 2008 SP1. There were several bugs we fixed in the RTM version of VS 2008 which can cause the IDE to hang under certain circumstances.
We take issues with the background compiler very seriously. If you can give us a repro of the problem it will definitely be investigated. If you can produce such a repro or even send us a memory dump when the IDE is locked please file a bug on Connect: https://connect.microsoft.com/VisualStudio
A couple of other steps you can take. Do you have any Add-ins installed in VS? If so try uninstalling them 1 at a time. I've seen several cases where 3rd party add-ins caused lock ups in the IDE which were completely unrelated to the C#/VB framework.
I have run into this very same problem with one of my forms that is very control intensive. It takes me a minute to change properties. All the other forms in the solution are pretty snappy.
The background compiler is now no longer a help and now an active hindrance to my productivity!
I'm not convinced that the IDE requires the background compiler to function, given that the C# IDE provides all the same features without a background compiler!
Or can you at least investigate perhaps providing some attributes that can be sprinkled in the code saying something like 'Code in this method is OK. Don't look at it'