Start Debugging F5 doesn't automatically build

Question

I used to have the environment optimized for c# but recently I have been doing a mostly c++ work. So after a format, I selected c++ instead. Once in a while I still do some c#/xna stuff so I installed xna as well. Problem is that visual studio does not behave anything like I remember it behaving when I had the environment optimized for c#. The run button no longer compiles the solution. Hell, compiling the solution does nearly nothing... I need to recompile for my changes to take effect. What the hell?

I have tried Tools > Import and Export Settings > Reset all settings, reinstalling xna and visual studio and still the F5 does not compile.

edit: Turns out that the projects were set to not compile under the configuration options. I never set this though. I found a forum with several people who had the same issue: http://social.msdn.microsoft.com/Forums/en-US/vsdebug/thread/8657c07a-da08-4a9f-9558-0c9d93c94ce2/

Answer 1

If you have a number of configurations, it's possible that the currently selected configuration doesn't have the project (you want to auto-build) in it.

For example.

The default configurations are DEBUG and RELEASE and all the projects (in the solution) are ticked against this.

But if you've manually un-ticked a project against one of these configurations OR you've manually added a new project and then un-ticked that project in the configuration .. Visual Studio won't compile those un-ticked projects.

So double check your configuration. (Right Click on the Solution name => Configuration Manager).

Answer 2

I hope this will fix your problem: Start debugging F5 does not build automatically, Visual Studio.