visual studio - run several applications at once

Question

The project, I work on, consists of several executables which run in background and a frontend. I develop in Visual Studio 2005. Often I need to run one background app with breakpoints enabled and then control it from the frontend. I set the important background app as a startup project and press F5. Then I start the frontend and the other background apps by "Start new Instance". A lot of clicking.

Is there a better way?

Answer 1

Visual Studio lets you start multiple projects when you hit F5. See How to: Set Multiple Startup Projects

In a nutshell:

• In Solution Explorer, select the solution.
• On the Project menu, click Properties. The Solution Property Pages Dialog Box opens.
• Expand the Common Properties node, and click Startup Project.
• Click Multiple Startup Projects and set the project actions.