How do I make Microsoft VCC crash out on the first build-error?

Question

My automated build process uses a command-line to build something like this:

devenv.exe myproj.sln /build release

It is a very long build-process which integrates components made by a team of developers. It takes about half an hour to run in release mode. Usually if one thing goes wrong then plenty of other dependancies will go wrong, so I occasionally get a message like:

---------------------- Done ----------------------
Rebuild All: 18 succeeded, 6 failed, 0 skipped

Actually I want the build to abort as soon as the first error is found. If there are any errors at all the build has failed. I need to know this as soon as possible and not wait to see all the other stuff fail.

Is there a way to change the build-process so that instead of running through the whole thing it dies as soon as something goes wrong?

I'm using Visual Studio .Net 2003 (yes I know it's old).

Answer 1

I use the following macro in Visual Studio 2005 to do this, but it should also work in 2003. Add this to the EnvironmentEvents module in the Macros IDE:

    Private Sub BuildEvents_OnBuildProjConfigDone(ByVal Project As String, ByVal ProjectConfig As String, ByVal Platform As String, ByVal SolutionConfig As String, ByVal Success As Boolean) Handles BuildEvents.OnBuildProjConfigDone
        If Success = False Then
            DTE.ExecuteCommand("Build.Cancel")
        End If
    End Sub

This will cause the build to cancel when any single project fails to build.

This page has further details on the macros involved.