When I hit Compile Project (SHIFT+F6) in Visual Studio 2008, Visual Studio always seems to check the referenced projects/libraries first. It is understandable, because they have to be compiled first, but currently I happen to spend most of my time working actively only with the top level project (it’s an ASP.NET application referencing a number of libraries), and the referenced libraries are sitting there and don’t need to be checked every time.
When I do a full rebuild, it takes about 15 seconds (on a warmed up machine). When I make a change in the ASP.NET project, Visual Studio spends about 10 seconds just checking the referenced libraries.
Is there a way to “tell” Visual Studio: “Please believe me, I know the referenced libraries are there, don’t check them”? in which case I would be fine with getting compilation errors in case my assumption was wrong.
Note: I suspect that C/C++ developers could be amused by this because they usually measure compilation times in minutes and often in hours. On the other hand, in C/C++ one can compile only a single file.
You can compile the whole solution, and then unload libraries projects (right click menu on the project in solution explorer).