FIX: A Workspace with Many Dependencies May Appear to Hang

When working with a workspace that contains many projects and dependencies, Developer Studio may appear to hang when the user does any of the following:

• Builds the project in the IDE (F7).
• Debugs the project in the IDE (F5).
• Executes the project in the IDE (CTRL+F5).
• From the IDE menu, clicks Project then Dependencies.

A workaround to this problem depends on the complexity of the workspace involved. Following are three suggestions:

• Unload projects that are not needed.
• Reduce the number of dependencies. Try to keep the dependencies one level deep.
• Break the projects into smaller workspaces.

Microsoft has confirmed that this is a bug in the Microsoft products that are listed at the beginning of this article.

This problem was corrected in Microsoft Visual C++ .NET.

If you perform one of the activities listed in the SYMPTOMS section above, Developer Studio appears to stop responding. Actually, Developer Studio is busy checking the project dependencies. When Developer Studio is finished checking dependencies, the desired operations will be carried out. Delays of up to 10 minutes have been reported but are not common.