Question

What are the best ways to speed up compilation time in Visual Studio 2005 for a solution containing mainly C++ projects?

Answer 1

Besides pre-compiling headers, there are number of other things that could be slowing you down:

• Virus checking software – can have a nasty impact on builds. If you have a virus checker running try to turn it off and see what sort of improvement you get.
• Low RAM – Not enough RAM will cause many more disc reads and slow you down. cont ->
• Slow HDD – You have to write to disc regardless and a slow drive, like those present in many laptops and lower-end systems, will kill your builds. You can get a faster drive, a RAID array or SSD
• Slow processor(s)… of course.
• Unlikely, but: Check and see if your projects are referencing network shares. Having to pull files across the network with each build would a big slowdown.

EDIT Few more thoughts:

• If your solution contains a large number of projects you could consider creating other “Sub” solutions that contain only the projects that you’re actively working on. This possibility depends on how interrelated your projects are.
• The project builds can have pre and post build event commands associated with them. Check the properties of your projects to see if there are any costly build events specified.