visual studio 2008 build optimization

Question

In single solution we having 100 projects, if we build solution its taking lots of time to build. I want to know do we have options to increase speed of visual studio build process.

Language used for development c#.

Answer 1

We have nearly 100 projects in one solution and a dev build time of only seconds :)

For local development builds we created a Visual Studio Addin that changes Project references to DLL references and unloads the unwanted projects (and an option to switch them back of course).

• Build our entire solution once
• Unload the projects we are not currently working on and change all project references to DLL references.
• Before check-in change all references back from DLL to project references.

Our builds now only take seconds when we are working on only a few projects at a time. We can also still debug the additional projects as it links to the debug DLLs. The tool typically takes 10-30 seconds to make a large number of changes, but you don't have to do that often.