C# – Visual Studio 2010: How to enforce build order of projects in a solution

asp.netbuild-processcc#-4.0visual studio 2010

I had no problem with this in Visual Studio 2008 but it seems that VS 2010 is having an issue, and I'm betting it's probably me.

I have a solution with an ASP.NET Web Site Project and a few C# projects (BLL, DAL, Tests in NUnit). I have configured the build process for the test project to automatically run NUnit to run the tests. I would like to ensure that the BLL and DAL projects build before the test project so that the tests will run against the latest compiled version (yes, I know I could do this all in one project, but I'm choosing not to — please bear with me 🙂 )

So, I set the dependencies of the Test project to include the BLL, DAL, and Web Application projects, and the build order shows BLL, DAL, Web Application, and then Tests. However, I noticed that the BLL doesn't actually build when I build the Test project.

Any idea what this could be or any option I might be missing to force the other projects to build when I build the Test project?

Thanks in advance for any help!

Best Answer

Nick Craver mentioned checking the Configuration Manager to ensure you have the project selected to build for a given configuration.

However, to set the build order for multiple projects in a solution right click the solution and choose "Project Build Order..." from the context menu.