Scenarios for Visual Studio's ‘Clean Solution’ Option

Question

My understanding is that Rebuild = Clean + Build. What are the likeliest reasons for offering ‘Clean Solution’ as a separate option, since rebuild does the same thing? I gave it some thought, and the only reason I could come up with was that some solutions can be fairly large and it may be time-consuming to do a clean AND a rebuild, but if you do a clean you'd have to (re)build anyway, right? Thanks, and happy holidays to all.

Answer 1

Clean Solution is like msbuild /t:clean and make clean, so it's useful in the same situations.

• Your build is a little broken, such that a generated file is placed in a common directory. When you switch configurations, you first clean the old configuration and then build the new one.

• You want to send someone a copy of your solution

• You don't have source control, but you want to checkpoint your solution before continuing

• You are modifying your project files by hand and want to make sure they work properly

• You created a new solution, worked on it for a day, and are now ready to put it in source control. Before you "add all files", you want to remove the generated files.

• You are short on disk space, and want to discard unnecessary files. Suppose you have a small SSD and several large solutions, or if you want to change configurations.