Professional Visual Studio® 2008

47.2. Manual Dependencies

Visual Studio 2008 is able to detect inter-project dependencies between projects that reference each other. This is then used to determine the order in which projects are built. Unfortunately there are some circumstances where Visual Studio can't determine these dependencies, such as when you have custom steps in the build process. Luckily you can manually define project dependencies to indicate how projects are related to each other. You can access the dialog shown in Figure 47-3 by selecting either the Project Project Dependencies or Project Build Order menu commands.

Note that these menu commands are only available when you have a solution with multiple projects in the IDE.

Figure 47.3. Figure 47-3

You first select the project that is dependent on others from the drop-down, and then check the projects it depends on in the bottom list. Any dependencies that are automatically detected by Visual Studio 2008 will already be marked in this list. The Build Order tab can be used to confirm the order in which the projects will be built.