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For some reason when I open my project Compile button is disabled. I'm in C++ file and Ctrl+F7 doesn't work, Menu/Build/Compile is disabled and Compile in context menu in SolutionExplorer is disabled too. I can build project with F7, but I can't compile single file. It used to work just fine.
Any ideas why?
Had the same problem just because my project wasn't set as startup Project in my solution. Setting it solve the issue.
It seems that problem is on my side: someone in my team introduced some build scripts, which apparently work only for building whole project.
It might also be that a referenced property sheet could not be found. You can check this by attempting to view the properties of the project (Alt-Enter). A warning will be shown then when the property sheet cannot be found. Fix the property sheet reference, and probably you can compile again.
Note: question was asked/answered a while ago, but maybe it is useful for other persons.
My project was using an intermediate version of a unity build (sometimes called blob build) where groups of ~10 cpp files are put in the same compilation unit by being included in some blob_xxx.cpp. The project only considers the blob_xxx.cpp as source files, so technically the .cpp I was working on was not a source file for the project, so the Compile command was disabled (this is similar to what Paulius experienced).
In this case, you need to either select the blob_xxx.cpp file and Compile this single file, or switch to a non-blob build.
If your objective is to quickly test for compilation errors, you can comment out the includes for all the files you are not working on.
Alternatively, you may setup your project generation script to isolate the files you are working on in a separate blob (it's up to you to define what "working on" means; it may be a manual list or the list of cpp files that are checked out in Perforce if using it).
I have been in this situation quite a few times where visual studio does not honor the Additional Include Directories when it comes to lib and header source files. For example, I just downloaded MyGUI source code and made sure the include directories were correct. I even put them to absolute paths, Visual Studio still complained that it could not find specific header files.
Does anybody experience the same thing with projects, and if so, is there a solution to this problem?Blockquote
EDIT: My apologies for not being able to explain fully. I know that the library and source files have different include directories. The project that I received had correct directory paths for the Additional Include Directories and Additional Library Directories but Visual Studio still failed to recognize them properly. I can right click and open the header file within Visual Studio but when compiling it still complains it cannot find the required header files. I regularly make projects relying on a framework I myself programmed, so I am quite familiar with how to set up dependencies. This is however the second time this seems to be happening. I don't recall which 3rd party project I was trying to compile last time, but Visual Studio simply refused to believe that the Additional Include Directories paths is where it should look for the header files. I am not sure how to give the complete details of this particular library (MyGUI) but I can point you to the website where you can download it to try and see if it is able to find the header files that are included in the project (if it doesn't compile, that is fine, and it is probably because of additional dependencies, but it should at least be able to find files in the common folder, especially when I put absolute paths in Additional Include Directories)
This happened to me once. It turned out the inconsistency of the Debug vs Release builds. When I modified one build, the other build was being compiled. Please set both builds with same include folders and see if it works. Good luck.
I've just spent some hours battling with failing #include paths in the compiler, inconsistencies between the compiler and intellisense.
What I finally discovered was that in the properties of the *.cpp file -- not the project, but the individual *.cpp file -- the "Additional Include Directories" property was blank. I had to explicitly set it to "inherit from from parent or project defaults" -- there's a checkbox near the lower-left corner of the dialog for editing the directory path.
I had copied this file from another project and used "Add > Existing Item..." to add it to the current project. My hypothesis was that maybe the "Existing Item" procedure skipped a property initialization step that "New Item" would normally perform. But I just tested that hypothesis by Adding another Existing and a New. Both of these files had their property set to inherit from the project, so I don't have an explanation for why my problem file was not initially set to inherit.
Anyway ... after much frustration, found and fixed that one.
I have found (stumbled) on the solution (I think). It has something to do with the character limit imposed by the OS. Although the limit should be 260, for me it falls in the below 150, see this discussion and links to it. I downloaded and unzipped the file to C:\Users\MyUserName\My Documents\Downloads\Downloads From Chrome\MyGui3.0...[and so on]. I learned quite some time ago not to try to compile projects under such long paths, but this time it completely slipped my mind as VS did not give me a warning at all and pointed me in the wrong direction. Anyway, cutting and pasting the project to D:\ fixed the issue. I am not going to checkmark the answer however until someone confirms this.
I have the same problem : Can't find .lib file even though I've added the additional include directory.
From an answer of Additional include directory in Visual studio 2015 doesn't work, I tried:
delete the .suo file and restart VS
Then it works for me.
I had this issue too. Just like sam said - this string value containing path to your framework includes has to be the same for the Debug and Release configurations. So the best way is to choose "Configuration:All Configurations" and "Platform:All Platforms" from the two context checklists on the top of the project properties window before typing it in, or copying from windows explorer adress bar.
Can you elaborate on this? If I recall, there are at least two places in Visual Studio where you can configure this:
Per-installation: Tools/Options/Projects and Solutions/VC++ Directories)
Per-project: Project/Properties/Configuration Properties/"C/C++"/General/Additional Include Directories
If you're adding the include directories per-project (#1), which I think you are, and then trying to include from another project, this will obviously not work. Try adding them at the per-installation level and see if it works.
Also, this may sound stupid/simplistic, but make sure the path is right (i.e. copy-paste into Explorer's path bar and see if the header files are in that folder).
If by lib files you mean library (.lib) files, the directory location is not specified through C/C++/General/Additional Include Directories but rather through Linker/General/Additional Library Directories.
It's logical if you think about it. C/C++ options are all compilation options, settings involved with compiling .cpp and .h files. Linker options are all linking options, settings involved with linking up .obj and .lib files.
I had the same symptoms in my c++ project. Navigating from header to header went fine, but after toggling to the source file of a header (let's say foo.cpp), then the navigation to an #include <bar.cpp> in that source file failed. I got the following error:
File 'bar.cpp' not found in the current source file's directory or in build system paths.
After research I noticed that the system build path given in the error where not extended with the include paths of the project. In other words: IntelliSense didn't know that the source file (foo.cpp) was part of the project, and therefore it didn't use the include paths of the project to search for the #include <bar.cpp>.
The fix for me was creating a file intelliSense.cpp (file name doesn't matter) that is part of the project, but excluded from the build. This file contains an include for each source file. ex:
#include <foo.cpp>
#include <bar.cpp>
...
This way IntelliSense knows that these source files are part of the project, and will therefore use the include paths of the project to resolve the #includes in those source files.
For me the issue was that .vcxproj Project file was read-only and after I added my directory to "Additional directories", the project file did not actually change. I was surprised that VS did not complain about this file being read-only.
So after I made that file write-able I could compile my project.
Here is another 'I had the same...' in vs2015.
For me it turned out that the active setting is also depending on the 'solution configuration' and 'solution platform'. That makes 4 settings which all should be identical.
That solved the problem in my case.
I realize this question is over 10 years old at this point, but I also just ran into this issue and none of the answers fit my scenario. After some playing with my IDE (VS 2019) for a few minutes I realized that the cpp file I was using had it's platform set to Win32, but the libs I was trying to use were built for x64.
As others have stated, make sure your project's configuration is set to
-"All Configurations" when you add the necessary paths to your project as that can also be an issue. I imagine my issue will not be as common, but I figured it was worth sharing. I hope this helps someone else in the future.
One more possible reason not mentioned earlier: make sure you are configuring properties of the correct project in a multi-project solution.
My problem was that I had a solution of two projects each using the same file with includes. Turns out that I correctly configured 'Additional Include Directories' only for one of two projects and totally forgot about another one. Of course error message was stating that only the second project and not the first one had problems.
When I right-click my solution in the Solution Explorer and choose Properties I get a dialog where I can select the Startup Project.
I sometimes select Current selection (If it is an experimental solution with lots of projects I jump between), but most often it is a Single startup project selected, which would usually be the main WinForms applications or or Console application.
My problem is that whenever I do a treeclean with the tfpt command (Team Foundation Power Tools 2008) this setting is forgotten. So when I try to run my solution the next time, it has defaulted to some random project and I get an error stating that I cannot run a class library or something like that. Which is obvious of course. But where is this setting stored? Why is it forgotten when I do the treeclean? The solution file is still there, right? Isn't solution properties stored there?
Reference 1
Arian Kulp says:
I was struggling with trying to figure
out why a certain solution of mine
wasn’t starting right. It was in VB
with four projects. Upon initial open
it would set a certain project with a
DLL output as startup. If I set the
EXE as startup project, it was fine,
but when I distribute code I always
clean it by removing *.suo and *.user
files, and bin/obj folders. Upon
opening the “cleaned” version, it
would always revert to the DLL project
and fail to F5 nicely. The fix turned
out to be simple, though I’m curious
as to why I needed to do this at all.
In the solution file, there are a list
of pseudo-XML “Project” entries. It
turns out that whatever is the first
one ends up as the Startup Project,
unless it’s overridden in the suo
file. Argh. I just rearranged the
order in the file and it’s good.
I’m guessing that C# is the same way
but I didn’t test it. I hope that
this helps someone!
Reference 2
Setting the StartUp Project
Which project is the "startup" project only has any relevance for debugging, which means it's user metadata from the point of the solution and the projects. Regardless of which project is the "startup" project, the compiled code is the same.
Because of this, the information is stored as a user setting in the Solution User Options file (solution.suo) which accompanies the Solution file (solution.sln). The .suo file "Records all of the options that you might associate with your solution so that each time you open it, it includes customizations that you have made" according to MSDN.
The .suo file is a binary file. If you want to read or change it programatically, you have to use IVsPersistSolutionOpts.LoadUserOptions from the Microsoft.VisualStudio.Shell.Interop namespace.
I suspect that this setting is saved as part of the .suo file created whenever you edit a solution file. This file contains various user settings, such as breakpoints, watch data etc.
I cannot confirm this but that would be my guess.
Unfortunately its not XML its a binary file and not easily edited.
I just wrote a little command line utility for windows called slnStartupProject to solve this. It sets the Startup Project automatically like this:
slnStartupProject slnFilename projectName
I personally use it to set the project after generating the solution with cmake that always sets a dummy ALL_BUILD project as the first project in the solution.
The source is on github:
https://github.com/michaKFromParis/slnStartupProject
Forks and feedbacks are welcome.
Hope this helps!
I have a Visual Studio project with about 60 C++ source files. I can do a build, and it completes without errors. But if I immediately hit F7 again, it always re-compiles about 50 of the source files. It doesn't re-compile all of the files, which is strange.
I have 'Enable minimal rebuild' (/Gm) set. Any ideas why it might be doing this?
None of the files have a Modified Date in the future.
Are any of your file dates in the future? This can occur if you changed time zones or changed the system clock time. Dates in the future will confuse the IDE and force a rebuild every time F7 or F5 is hit.
I've solved the same problem.
In my case compiler displayed warning, that /Zi option is required if /Gm is specified.
/Gm enables "minimum rebuild", which requires debug information in .pdb file. So, if you don't want to use .pdb, also disable minumum rebuild - it solved a problem in my case.
Most probably is a matter of dependencies.
Consider the following possibilities:
If you have custom build tools defined for some of the files in your solution, make sure that the output property contains the right file name(s). If the output of the build tool doesn't correspond to the one(s) specified in the output file names, the builder will rebuild that file.
If you have custom build events, check whether the output from those build events don't affect the dependencies of the files to be built.
I had problems when trying, at post-build, to copy or move some of the output files to a build folder. The post build operations that affect the timestamp of the ouput files of the build process will determine rebuild each time.
In my case of such effect (C++ via VS2005) it was on Release configuration only, and the Studio tells in the build output, that compiler option /Gm is ignored if /Zi - option is not set. After setting /Zi via
Configuration Properties -> C/C++ -> General -> Debug Information Format : Program Database (/Zi) ,
it was ok. But isn`t there something wrong, when the Release Configuration needs something about Debugging? Not yet clear to me!
Project Properties -> "C/C++" -> "Output Files" -> "Program Database File Name" option should not be empty. Set this option by selecting from drop-down box . The option will be set like this: $(IntDir)\vc90.pdb. And line ProgramDataBaseFileName="" will be removed from vcproj file.
Then only changed *.cpp files will be recompiled when you build the project or solution.
It seems that this problem can be caused by many things, but what fixed it for me was:
Closing Visual Studio
Manually deleting all bin and obj folders (Clean doesn't seem to do the trick)
Opening the solution and running Clean (I'm not sure if this is necessary, but I did it just in case...)
Building like normal
Note: This was for a C# program in Visual Studio 2010.
After a couple days of googling, I ended up with a solution to my problem.
I encountered this problem when I moved my projects to a new PC. I had checked several times the creation date of the files. These dates were up-to-date, however the modification dates were in the bast (kinda bizarre) even when I changed the files.
A simple update of the files resolved the problem.
I'm having the same problem, and it seems to be because I've turned browse information off. Properties->C/C++->Browse Info->Enable Browse Info->None. The only fix I've found is turning it back on. This is for an xbox 360 project, fwiw, my other projects don't have the problem.
A reason is if the 'date last modified' for one of the source file is set for some date in the future: it rebuilds, and then the source file is still later than the executable.
This problem with the dates can happen if the source file is located in a directory a remote machine (a network share), and/or may even happen if your machine's time isn't synchronised with the date of the machine which is running the server of your source version control system.
Check your project includes any .h header file that doesn't exist on disk. Always happens to me when I delete a header file I'm not actually including anywhere, but forget to delete it from my solution navigator in VS. Note: missing headers produce no errors during the build (when not #included anywhere).
Check your project's Program Database Filename setting. For some reason, if this is set to the name of a directory (such as "$(IntDir)\"), it can sometimes cause VS to rebuild your project every time, even if you're not generating PDB files (i.e. Debug Information Format is set to "Disabled").
This is a bug in VS2008; I have not yet reproduced it yet in VS2010, but my tests haven't been thorough, so I'm not confident saying that the behavior isn't present in VS2010.
What caused similar symptoms at me was:
I have several projects in a solution. There were .cpp files which were referenced (and therefore compiled) by >1 projects. Unfortunately Visual Studio creates .obj files with a very simple naming - it just replaces ".cpp" by ".obj". Creating wrapper .cpp-s with different named solved the problem.
I had something similar. Even though I did have pre and post build events, they weren't causing the issue. It turned out that I had a number of projects down the reference chain that had content files that were marked as "copy always" instead of "copy if newer" meaning that these projects were always considered "out of date". By changing all of these to "copy if newer", changes to my unit test project no longer forced a recompile of all of the other projects.
Disabling "minimal rebuild" (Configuration Properties > C/C++ > Code Generation) fixed it for me. The compiler even left a clue:
1>cl : Command line warning D9007 : '/Gm' requires '/Zi or /ZI'; option ignored
Although I must point out, the compiler did not ignore the option as it said.
In my case I changed system data time to previous date so it is rebuilding every time because of different time stamp of the files once changed to the current time its not rebuilding every time.
We have that here regularly:
delete all intermediate and output files by hand. The clean option in vstudio is sometimes not enough. From a fresh start do the complete build. If after a complete build vstudio still wants to recompile certain files it might be related to next bullet.
if in your vcxproj a header file is referenced which is not on disk, the project is also recompiled. You might check this by some hidden feature described on MSDN blogs or just touch (i.e. click on it to open) all header files in the project exploder and see if one does not exist on disk
Had the same problem. Solved by:
-delete output folder (obj,exe,all files)
-run cygwin
-cd project folder
-run "touch *", which reset file modify date/time
-build and enjoy problem fixed
There is similar issue with project rebuild.
Visual Studio does not recompile but re-links a project every time on F7 hit.
Fix is simple. Try to open in Editor all files included into project (from Solution Explorer double click on each file) and remove from solution those files which do not exist.
I've got a solution containing multiple projects. I'm only changing the code in one of them, but every time I hit Ctrl+Shift+B, Visual Studio rebuilds all of the others.
I want it to build the other projects, so this is good. What's not good is that, normally, it would see that there was nothing to do. I have a wonky dependency somewhere, so this isn't working.
Is there a tool or macro (or switch) that'll explore the dependency tree and tell me which files are missing or out-of-date, so that I can get it to stop?
I know that I can solve this specific case, by (e.g.) touching all of the project files.
Unfortunately, I've often seen this situation when a file is configured to produce an output file (e.g. an IDL file is configured to output a typelibrary, but doesn't contain a 'library' block, so it'll never create a TLB).
This wouldn't be resolved by touching all of the project files, so I'm looking for something more general to add to my personal toolbox that'll easily tell me why a file is being rebuilt, whether it be because it's older than a dependency, or because the project is misconfigured to expect an output file that will never be produced.
In Options / Projects and Solutions / Build and Run turn up the MSBuild project build output verbosity to Detailed. It should give you an idea of why it is rebuilding all the projects.
If I understand you right, you might solve this by touching all your project's files. It may be caused by a source-file having a last-modified-time that's in the future.
Edit:
I know that I can solve this specific case, by (e.g.) touching all of the project files, but I'd like to add something to my personal box of tricks that I can use in the future, in the general case.
I'm confused - what's the 'general case' of this problem?
Not that I've found. If you know that a project is not going to change often, you can tell the Configuration Manager not to build it. (Right-click on the Solution, and select Configuration Management)
As far as I know ctrl + shift + b is by default bound to BuildSolution, so that would be why all your projects are being build. i'm not really sure what else you could use except for rightclicking the project and pressing build :)
You might want to check in Tools>Option>Projects and Solutions and check if your option is set to Only Build startup project and dependencies instead of all the solution.
Or instead of using ctrl+shirt+b you should simply press F6 on the project you want to build :)
You can use shift+F6 to build just the current project.
While not directly answering my question: "is there a tool that'll work this out for me?", I found the specific problem by using SysInternals Process Monitor:
The project was configured with /analyze, which requires Visual Studio Team Edition, but the version on this PC is Visual Studio Professional, which doesn't support it. Unfortunately, there appears to be a bug in Visual Studio, where it thinks that the .pchast file should be created, even though it has no way to do so. I've raised this on Connect.
I think I might write a macro for Visual Studio Professional that, if /analyze is turned on, simply creates an empty .pchast file at the end of the build...