How does visual studio know which cpp files to rebuild when an include file is changed?

Question

In some of my VS 2005 projects, when I change an include file some of the cpp files are not rebuilt, even though they have a simple #include line in them.

Is this a known bug, or something strange about the projects? Is there any information about how VS works out the dependencies and can I view the files for that?

btw I did try some googling but couldn't find anything about this. I probably need the right search term...

Answer 1

I've experienced this problem from time to time, and with other IDEs too, not just VS. It seems thatv their internal dependency tree sometimes gets out of whack with reality. In these cases, I've found deleting pre-compiled headers (this is important) and doing a complete rebuild always solves the problem. Luckily, it doesn't happen often.